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WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT ? 


l 


BOOKS BY 

CHARLES BRODIE PATTERSON 


A New Heaven and a New Earth. 
Thought Studies of the Fourth Dimen¬ 
sion. 

12mo, cloth. $1.25 net. 

Postage, 12 cents. 

What Is New Thought ? The Living 
Way. 

12mo, cloth. $1.00 net. 

* Postage, 10 cents. 

Love’s Song of Life. 

Printed in two colors. In envelope, ready for mail¬ 
ing, 25 cents net. Ooze leather, boxed, 75 cents net. 
Postage, 5 cents. 


THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 
NEW YORK 





WHAT IS 
NEW THOUGHT? 

Htuittg 3®aij 


BY 

CHARLES BRODIE PATTERSON 

u 

AUTHOR. or “a new heaven and a new earth,” “love’s 
SONG OF LIFE,” “DOMINION AND POWER,” ETC. 


NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


Copyright, 1913, 

By CHARLES BRODIE PATTERSON. 
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London. 
Published April , 1913 . 


/ /.** 

©CI.A343437 

Mm i 




DEDICATED 


To the Fearless Seeker after 
Truth, the One who seeks Truth 

SOLELY FOR THE SAKE OF TRUTH, 
WHO NEVER BELITTLES HIMSELF BY 
PRE-JUDGING, BUT WHO WITH UN¬ 
BIASED Mind proves All Things 
AND THEN ONLY HOLDS FAST THAT 

which is Good 





PREFACE 


T N Its material progress the world is moving faster 
than it has ever done at any period of the past. 
The science of the present is constantly opening up 
a new world through its many and varied discov¬ 
eries. While the greater number of such discoveries 
are being put to practical ends and purposes, yet it 
is doubtful with all the advance made by science, 
and all the vast accumulations of wealth, whether 
man in his mind is as happy or as contented as he 
formerly was. While all the changes which make 
for his material well-being are taking place, his men¬ 
tal unrest seems to increase. Up to the present time 
many people have believed that through material 
accumulation mankind was to become satisfied, but 
the world of man’s consciousness is larger than his 
outer environment. When his every outer need is 
satisfied, the unrest will continue because heart and 
mind will have to become as fully satisfied as man’s 
physical nature before the unrest will cease. In the 
past people have believed in much that was untrue, 
and both mental and spiritual progress was retarded 
by false belief; and now, while to a degree their eyes 
have been opened so that they are no longer held in 


Vlll 


PREFACE 


servile bondage to the old, jet they have not suffi¬ 
ciently laid hold on the new to effect a true 
adjustment to life and its laws. Unrest must con¬ 
tinue until greater light comes, and with its advent 
there will come peace to the mind and health for the 
body. The great lesson yet to be learned is this, 
that man has been equipped in every way spiritually, 
mentally, and physically to work out all his own prob¬ 
lems, whether they be little or great, and through 
the doing of this to enter into the fullness of life. 
Through a knowledge of the truth a man may free 
himself from all kinds of bondage, whether it be the 
bondage of physical pain or disease, or the bondage 
of mind in which he may be to his own false thoughts 
and habits. A knowledge of the truth will show the 
way whereby each and every false condition in life 
is to be met and overcome. This book has for its 
principal object the throwing of light on the path¬ 
way of life in order to make it easier for people to 
overcome the unrest of mind and body, and to show 
that through inner knowledge one may become har¬ 
moniously adjusted to outer environment. 

It is the firm conviction of the author that it is 
as easy to acquire and retain health as it is to live 
in a state of pain and disease, but this can only be 
achieved through knowledge and conformity to the 
laws of being. No one need hope to accomplish a 


PREFACE 


IX 


great work in life without a whole, sound body; there¬ 
fore if one can have such a body through his own 
personal effort, how much better it will be thus to 
lay the foundation of his work in a thoroughly satis¬ 
factory way. Most people desire to be well and 
happy, but comparatively few know how to attain 
such an end. They think that it is usually to be 
gained through purely physical ways and means, and 
they therefore expend great effort in that direction 
without really reaping any compensating gains, while 
if the same amount of effort were spent in the de¬ 
velopment of one’s own innate power, the result would 
prove in every case far more effective than any that 
could be attained in any other way. Our lives can be¬ 
come what we wish them to become, when we accept 
the lawful and the orderly way that comes from a 
recognition that intelligence and power are within 
man’s own consciousness, and that the true legitimate 
outcome is an expression of perfect physical health 
and strength. Everything in life worth having de¬ 
mands some effort on the part of the one who would 
receive. We make a mistake when we think that we 
can get something for nothing. Sooner or later we 
must pay the price for all that we receive. The 
natural way is to give first and receive afterwards, 
so that if one earnestly desires health and strength, 
the best way to receive them is through making the 


X 


PREFACE 


conditions necessary to the receiving. In this booh 
I have given many suggestions as to how the above 
ends may be attained. I have not the slightest de¬ 
sire whatever to destroy any one’s faith, or to take 
away anything that has proven itself to be good in 
the past. I do hope, however, to show a way which 
if followed will make for still better things in life. 
Let me use this as an illustration: ships that sail the 
ocean have their sides and bottoms gradually cov¬ 
ered with barnacles, and as these are ever on the in¬ 
crease they soon come seriously to interfere with 
the speed of the ship, so that after a time it becomes 
necessary to have the ship put into dry dock, when 
all the barnacles are scraped off so that she may be 
able to sail just as fast as she did in the beginning. 
Men and women are often in much the same position 
as the ship. They acquire desires and habits that 
should have no place in life; their minds become filled 
with thoughts that tend to retard real progress, 
such as thoughts that worry and make the mind 
anxious or fearful, thoughts and words that make 
for fault-finding and unkindness, thoughts concern¬ 
ing others of prejudice, judgment, and condemnation. 
All these are like the barnacles on the ship. If 
people are to make real progress in life, then they 
must leave all these things behind them and acquire 
new ways and methods of thought and action. The 


PREFACE 


xi 


right way of doing is far more simple than the wrong 
way, because if we follow the right we shall not have 
two courses of action, one right and the other wrong, 
but only the one true way of thinking and doing 
everything. If the mind of man is as variable as 
the wind, so that one day the mind is warm and the 
next it is cold, there will come little of true rest or 
peace into his life. Some might urge that this is 
necessary in order to give greater variety to life, 
but the truth is life offers so much variety in all that 
is real, that we are only depriving the mind of that 
which would make for its highest good when we allow 
it to become engrossed in unreal thoughts and emo¬ 
tions. Wisdom, power, happiness, and health may 
all be ours when we let go of the unreal and lay hold 
with vital strength of mind and purpose upon that 
which is true and lasting. Our highest ideals can 
be attained only through consistent, persevering ef¬ 
fort; and we should always remember this, that the 
ideal is there in order to be fulfilled and through its 
fulfillment to be succeeded by a still newer, grander 
and more lofty ideal. This is the only way growth 
takes place in life. 

For the encouragement of the reader who may not 
have realized as much of health and happiness as de¬ 
sired, let me say this, that in any new departure one 
may find it more or less difficult at first, but as time 


Xll 


PREFACE 


goes by it will become evident that the things he is 
trying to do are much easier of accomplishment than 
at first seemed possible. There are some people who 
get it into their minds that the good things in life 
are intended for other people but not for them, that 
a course of action that would prove of the greatest 
help to another would not result in any marked bene¬ 
fit to themselves. This is a mistake; the laws of life 
will work just as much good for one person as for 
another. The whole question is only one of right 
adjustment. If we are adjusted in the true way, 
then we are bound to get the true effects. God does 
not give to one and withhold from another. The sun 
shines for all, the rain falls for all, and the results 
are only a question of how one is adjusted to one or 
to the other. Everything necessary to a thoroughly 
equipped life is awaiting the individual who is quick 
enough to recognize it and to make it his own. All 
things are ours, but unless we are using the things 
which belong to us they will prove of little if any 
benefit to us. It is only through the use of all the 
possessions we have acquired that we enter into and 
acquire new and still greater possessions. Through 
the use of mental faculties the mind grows strong; 
through the use of all the physical organs the body 
grows strong. When we exercise our spiritual at¬ 
tributes, we grow strong in a spiritual way. As no 


PREFACE 


Xlll 

one can do this for us, we come at last to see that it 
is of the greatest importance that we should do it for 
ourselves, and when we start out and take this course, 
then of us it may be truly said that we have con¬ 
sciously entered the pathway that leads to the life 
eternal. Charles Brodie Patterson. 


London, England, 
January, 1913. 


CONTENTS 

PART I 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Introduction.3 

II. A Statement of Principles ... 9 

III. The Undying Ideal 5 ... 18 

IV. Man’s Potential Powers ... 31 

V. Real and Unreal Emotions ... 43 

VI. Desire and Will .57 

PART II 

VII. Mental and Physical Poise . . 73 


VIII. How to Acquire and Retain Health 89 


IX. Harmonic Vibration. 101 

X. Magnetic Attraction . . . .114 

XI. The Successful Life .... 127 

XII. Super-man . . . . . . .142 

PART III 

XIII. Shadow Worship. 155 

XIV. The Ascent of Man . . . .169 

XV. The Mind’s Cultivation . . .180 

XVI. The Development of Talents . . 193 

XVII. The Age to Come. 205 

XVIII. The Brotherhood of Man . . . 220 


XV 











PART I 






WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

T HAVE said elsewhere in this book that Law and 
**■ Order are universal; that the universe re¬ 
sponds to it, the part as much as the whole. No 
matter what phase of life we may examine into, we 
shall find neither chance nor happenings, but every 
action a response to definite law. There are many 
manifestations or expressions of law, but let it be 
remembered that they are all but degrees of the 
one supreme Law of life. When the white ray is 
broken up in the spectrum, we have the seven pris¬ 
matic colors; so, when the great white Law of 
Love is broken up in human life, we get its varying 
degrees of faith, hope, joy, peace, gentleness— 
these are all differentiations of the universal Law of 
Love, manifesting itself in different ways and degrees, 
yet each partaking of the greater Law which gave 
it birth. An individual may respond to any one 
or even more of these lesser laws, without under¬ 
standing other than a fraction of life; but he who 
3 


4 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

has entered into the white flame, the realm of the 
Law of Love, has entered into a knowledge of the 
kingdom of God—has entered into the central 
sphere, and has become one with God and humanity. 
Oneness is the great characteristic of Love; what¬ 
ever we love we become one with; true understand¬ 
ing comes with love. It is only necessary to under¬ 
stand in order to see every difference pass away. 
The ultimate end of life is to love, not to be loved, 
although that follows as a natural sequence, but the 
greatest desire, the greatest prayer of life should 
be to love with soul, and mind, and body; to radiate 
love, as the sun radiates light. In the sunshine 
of love the mind knows no fear; sin and all its dis¬ 
astrous consequences have no place where love lives. 
Sin, disease, and death are only evidences of the lack 
of love in the life. Where love is there is life, there 
is intelligence; where love is there is the perfect 
fulfillment of all law; for man living in it has passed 
from death unto life, has entered into the glorious 
liberty of the sons of God. We take many and 
varied paths leading to this one great event of hu¬ 
man existence, but every path brings us in the end to 
the goal of the heart’s desire. There are ways lead¬ 
ing to it by the green pastures and the still waters, 
a gentle but an ever ascending way of life. There 
is also the way of storm and tempest; there is the 


INTRODUCTION 


5 

way through pain and sorrow; yet all ways lead to 
God and lead to Love. 

Every soul has within itself the guiding star, the 
light that is to enlighten; this* light is a divine spark 
of the living Love to lead us to, and at last con¬ 
sciously to relate us to the living Flame, the Love 
of God which passeth understanding. 

All the way through, from the lowest plane of life 
up, we are working out our salvation. We meet 
with what seems to be evil, with a continued resistance 
from forces both within and without; we resist and 
we battle with them; at times we are defeated, and 
again we overcome, but all along the way of life 
the struggle is going on; a struggle not only for 
the mastery of things, but for the mastery of one’s 
self. Through all the seeming evil, through all the 
shadows of life, through all the sorrow and pain, 
there is a longing, an up-reaching, that is never sat¬ 
isfied with life as it seems to be. We realize that 
the life is not full, is not complete; it is lacking in 
harmony; that all these conditions as they come to 
be understood are seen to be only the passing, the 
transient; all to be left behind as we press on to the 
things which lie before. Every experience brings 
with it something of the pure gold; every experience 
leaves behind something of the dross of life; there 
is a divine alchemy working through it all, bringing 


6 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT 1 ? 

the good out of the evil, joy out of sorrow, and 
peace out of pain. All things are working together 
for good; but there is never perfect rest or peace, 
perfect knowledge or understanding, until we know 
of a certainty that we are under the dominion of the 
Law of Love. Only as this Law becomes fully ex¬ 
pressed through us do we leave every contradiction 
of life, love, and wisdom behind. Only under the 
Law of Love does life become a glorious reality, a 
never ending day. When in our souls and minds we 
respond to universal love, we have consciously en¬ 
tered the great universe of etheric vibration, wherein 
the part is vibrating harmoniously with the whole. 
Every glory here is succeeded by a still greater 
glory, every joy by a greater joy; life is an unend¬ 
ing song of beauty; color and sound become so won¬ 
derfully entrancing that well has it been said that— 
“ Eye hath not seen and ear hath not heard, neither 
hath it entered into the heart of man to know of the 
glories that God hath prepared for him.” But with 
the new life all things are made new; the love and 
the wisdom give to man a new consciousness, and this 
new consciousness is able to enter into and under¬ 
stand life in a way it could never have been under¬ 
stood by man’s partial consciousness. Oneness is 
the key-note; every part is seen and known in its re¬ 
lation to the whole—a universe filled with a multi- 


INTRODUCTION 7 

plicity of forms, but an all-pervading Spirit, both 
within and without, directing and controlling, 
through a universal Law of Love, each part and all 
parts of the great stupendous whole. So that the 
enlightened soul perceives that God and His crea¬ 
tion is all there is ; that in spirit we are one with God; 
that in our bodies we are one with all forms; that 
the Spirit within is God, and the body without is 
His handiwork; that whatever we possess or what¬ 
ever we are comes from the One Giver of every good 
and every perfect gift; that whatever we are or 
whatever we may become, we can be nothing less 
nor anything more than a manifestation of God’s 
love and wisdom. No matter on what plane of de¬ 
velopment we find life, it is a manifestation of Love. 
Every form is a symbol of divine power, all life and 
all forms responding to the universal Law of Love. 
If it could only enter into the mind of man that 
through Love he could accomplish all things; he 
could be what he willed to be; he could free himself 
from sin, pain, and death; he could be even as a God 
exercising dominion and power; he would forsake at 
once the little ways and means of attainment and 
lay hold on the everlasting ways of life; he would 
give up all, he would sell all, in order to enter 
into the possession of the pearl of great price. In 
a word, he would fulfill the whole law of life. The 


8 


WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


spirit of Love would become the only guide that 
would lead him into the way of all truth, of all right¬ 
eousness. In the spirit of Love there is perfect free¬ 
dom to live one’s life according to the divine Law 
that has been written into it. He would perceive 
the plan; he would bring the personal will into har¬ 
mony with the universal Will so that he would be¬ 
come a perfect instrument, through him divine Love 
and Intelligence would work for the upbuilding of 
a new, a more beautiful world—a world that would 
express both God’s love and wisdom; and man, the 
son of God, would be its builder; a world devoid of 
everything that is transitory; a world in which there 
is no more night, no more sorrow and pain, no more 
disease or death, but a world of eternal life and 
light; a world that is a real manifestation of Love. 


CHAPTER II 


r A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES 

f I HIE Religion and Philosophy of New Thought 
has for its foundation Eternal Law. 

Its whole structure rests on the Oneness of Life— 
God—Universal Life—Love—Intelligence—in all, 
through all, and above all. 

A realization of the oneness of all life and its forms 
is the only key that will unlock the mysteries of both 
visible and invisible worlds. 

All forms, whether seen or unseen, are manifesta¬ 
tions of Love and Wisdom, symbols or expressions of 
Universal Soul. 

One Life moves in all; one Law governs all; God 
and Man are essentially One. 

“ We live in God and know it not.” This is not 
a matter of belief, opinion, or speculation, but the 
Eternal Truth, and he who is able to comprehend it 
enters into the life and liberty of a son of God. 

New Thought, as opposed to Old Thought, takes 
the ground that the truth regarding life and its laws 
is not to be found in the study of phenomena, but 
rather in Man’s inmost consciousness. 

9 


IO WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


The Kingdom of Heaven is now. The Kingdom of 
God, the source of Power, is potential in every life. 

The real quest in man’s life is the search after and 
the discovery of his own Soul—for God lives and 
moves and breathes in every human being, even 
though we are all unconscious of it. “The spirit of 
the Lord hath formed us, the breath of the Almighty 
hath given us life.” 

“ Speak to Him, thou, for he hears 
And Spirit with Spirit will meet; 

Closer is He than breathing. 

Nearer than hands or feet.” 

Through Soul Realization, that is, through the 
use of Love and Wisdom, we come to know more of 
the Divine Presence. 

We can know God or ourselves only as love and 
wisdom rule and direct us in all our ways, and such 
knowledge causes us to forego the purely personal 
will or desire and to enter into and live consciously 
in the life that is Universal. 

“ Foregoing self, the Universe grows I.” 

Only in the spirit of love and wisdom is Divinity 
realized. 

“ He called them gods unto whom the word of 
God came.” When the same mind dwells in us that 
dwelt in Christ, we shall have attained unto the Unity 
of the Faith; unto the knowledge of a Son of God; 


A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES ill 

unto the measure of the fullness of the stature of 
Christ, having dominion and power over all things. 

This to some people may be no more than a dream; 
to others a far-away vision; but to him who appre¬ 
hends—who knows—it becomes a glorious reality. 

New Thought comes to tell the world of to-day 
that God is the Father and Mother of all humanity; 
that all men and women are brothers and sisters; 
that only in this Oneness can Eternal Life be real¬ 
ized and death and the grave overcome. 

The lowest elemental man and the greatest saint 
are members one of another; Jesus, the Christ, is our 
elder brother, brother as much to the so-called sin¬ 
ner as to the saint: all are joint heirs in the love and 
mercy of God which endureth forever. 

Slowly but surely we are coming to understand 
the wonderful Gospel the Great Master taught 
nearly two thousand years ago: the Gospel of Peace 
and Good-will to all; the healing of the sick; the re¬ 
lease of the captives; the recovery of sight for the 
blind; the setting at liberty of the bruised; the 
preaching of the acceptable year of the Lord—that 
year is here and now, for to-day is the accept¬ 
able time—to-day if you will hear His voice, to-day 
if you will hear the cry, “ Come unto me, all the ends 
of the earth and be saved ”—saved from every trou¬ 
ble and sorrow of our own making; saved from false 
desires and pains; saved from the vengeance of an 


12 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


angry man-made God; saved to enter into the very 
heart of love itself and to dwell in the presence of 
Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence: to 
know that God lives in us and that we live in God, 
and that we have no existence apart from the One. 

New Thought stands for the Eternal Newness of 
Life. 

Before it every unreality vanishes and every vain 
imagination passes away and only that which is real 
and eternal remains. 

New Thought teaches that the attitude now held 
towards sin, disease and death is but partial and in¬ 
complete ; that evil, as generally understood, has no 
place in God’s plan; that in the unfolding of all the 
powers and possibilities which have been written into 
the life of man—as plan—there is always to be 
found a lawful and orderly sequence. 

There are many stages in the development of con¬ 
sciousness through which man passes before disclos¬ 
ing fully the Divine Image and Likeness. At first 
all seems temporal and fleeting; change follows 
change in quick succession; form is created in order 
to be destroyed; death is as real as life; sin abounds 
as much as righteousness. This however is only the 
seeming, or at least the partial and incomplete. 
This is the consciousness wherein man seems to be 
alone, detached from God and separated from his 


A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES 13 

fellowman, fighting his battle of life, and everything 
that in any way interferes with his onward march— 
that march which is to lead him from earth to 
heaven, from humanity to Divinity—is looked upon 
as an evil thing: thus forces, men, and things become 
good or evil according as they aid or interfere with 
man in his early stages of development. 

It is a transitory state but a very necessary one in 
human development. 

New Thought declares that Fear is at the root of 
all, so-called, Evil: that all sin, sorrow, disease and 
death have their origin in Fear. 

New Thought declares that perfect Love casteth 
out all Fear: that we have the God-given right, as 
sons and daughters of the living God, to be perfect, 
even as our Father in Heaven is perfect. 

New Thought tells us to love and to live in the 
Eternal Now, to love and to live like true brothers 
and sisters, like true sons and daughters of God: to 
rule all things and to be subject only to the Law of 
God, the Law of Love, against which there can pre¬ 
vail no other law or laws. 

New Thought tells us that to love and to serve is 
the highest prerogative in the life of man. 

New Thought says with the Master: 44 A new 
Commandment I give unto you, that ye love one an¬ 
other,” and teaches that the one who does this has 


14 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

literally entered into the Kingdom of God; has be¬ 
come one consciously with God and man. 

To such an one death and the grave have no ter¬ 
rors. He has overcome the world and the things of 
the world and stands triumphant. He has attained 
to the fullness of the measure of the Krishna, the 
Buddha, the Christ. 

New Thought is not a church, a cult, or a sect. 
It recognizes no limitations of any kind, creates no 
barriers between man and man: it asks no allegiance 
to creed, form, or personality, and is as much for one 
race as for another. 

It neither judges nor condemns but recognizes God 
as all in all and declares that throughout the vast 
Universe His Law of Love rules supreme and that he 
who lives in the Spirit of Love fulfills the perfect law. 

New Thought stands for the Universal Brother¬ 
hood and Sisterhood of man, teaching that God 
created man and woman equal in their different 
spheres of life; that in the eternal Law of Life there 
is no respect of persons: that there cannot be one 
law for man and another for woman, but that both 
are amenable to the same law, that man in his laws 
should seek to have them conform to the higher Law, 
so that equal justice and equity should be meted out 
to all alike. 

New Thought teaches that one may acquire knowl- 


A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES 15 

edge in many ways, through precept, example, ex¬ 
perience, but that the ultimate authority of life is 
that Light which is within each man’s own con¬ 
sciousness, that Light which is to enlighten every 
man who cometh into the world. 

New Thought declares that the golden rule, as 
enunciated by the Founder of Christianity, is a state¬ 
ment of eternal Law: that “ whatsoever ye would that 
men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them; ” 
that we live in a universe of cause and effect, and that 
44 whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” 

New Thought teaches, as did the Nazarene, that 
the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, 
but that this power should be carried to its ultimate 
fulfillment in the healing of the sick. 

New Thought teaches that health, happiness and 
success in life constitute the legitimate birthright of 
every child of the All-loving Father-Mother God, and 
that through knowledge of, and conformity to Divine 
Law, one enters into his real inheritance. 

New Thought teaches neither future punishment 
nor reward other than that the individual rewards or 
punishes himself as he conforms to or opposes the 
Laws of Life, either consciously or unconsciously. 

New Thought does not come to supersede or to de¬ 
stroy the Christian faith as presented to the world 
by its Founder. It is not in any way at variance with 


16 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHTS 


the spirit of Christianity, but simply seeks to fulfill 
the vital truths that Jesus taught 1900 years ago. 
It desires to re-present the great fundamental truths 
that Jesus not only taught but lived, and to show 
that what is needed to-day is not so much a* theoret¬ 
ical as an applied Christianity: that living the Christ 
life is not mere conformity to creed or form, but be¬ 
ing animated by the same Spirit, and through lov¬ 
ing service to one’s fellow-men demonstrating out¬ 
wardly the truth of the inner Spirit. 

New Thought recognizes that all people and all 
their religions are in different stages of growth 
and evolution, and that every stage in human devel¬ 
opment being a necessary stage, should be recog¬ 
nized as such; therefore, New Thought does not 
make war against any religion. It recognizes the 
absolute right not only of religious bodies but of 
individuals to work out their Plan of Life accord¬ 
ing to the knowledge they are in possession of. 
There can, therefore, be no spirit of judgment, con¬ 
troversy or condemnation of any other body of peo¬ 
ple, even though they are in apparent opposition to 
what New Thought teaches. 

New Thought recognizes the right of every man 
to live his own life in accordance with the highest 
dictates of his own mind and conscience; that where 
there is truth, there of necessity, must be freedom. 


A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES 17 

New Thought is man’s real Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence, his becoming a free man through a knowl¬ 
edge of the truth that always and at all times makes 
for the true freedom of life. 


CHAPTER III 


THE UNDYING IDEAL 

A/TAN is the representative of God on earth. 
^ He unites within himself a part that is of 
the earth, earthy and a part that is of the heavens, 
heavenly. Like the giant oak that stands alone in 
the open, battered by wind and storm, sending its 
roots down deep into the earth in order that it may 
retain its existence as a form, a thing with life and 
power, man through the physical side of his nature, 
lays hold on the things of the earth and uses the 
earthly as a means to an end. The oak is con¬ 
cerned in developing the Plan that was written into 
the acorn. A small part of the oak lives in the 
earth, but the greater part is living in the heavens. 
So man, in working out the Image and Likeness, 
draws a certain amount from the outer world, but 
his greater nourishment comes from the mind and 
spirit within. 

The sun with its vivifying power gives light and 
warmth, and because of this light and warmth the 
tree grows. Drawing to itself the very light and 
energy of the sun it becomes, as it were, one with 
18 


THE UNDYING IDEAL 


19 

the sun, the light and energy of the sun living in the 
tree, and the tree enveloped from without by all 
light, and all heat, and all energy. 

Man, like the tree, is drawing his Spiritual energy 
from the great Sun of Righteousness. Divine Light 
and Energy are entering into his life, and he in turn 
is being bathed in the great ocean of Spiritual Life 
and Light, and Love. 

In the tree there is the constant pressure of the 
life that is resident at the center ever making for a 
larger and fuller expression; its form fitly repre¬ 
sents its inner power. In the life of man the Love, 
with the joy, the faith, and the hope that pertain 
to it, is continually pressing from the center, ex¬ 
panding the mind, strengthening and making whole 
the body. 

We say that the tree is evolving, that the man is 
unfolding, and that both are in the process of 
growth and development. What causes the evolu¬ 
tion of the tree or of the man? What but the life- 
forces that are continually pressing outward in their 
effort to give form to the perfect Ideal, the Plan 
that has been written within. Universal Will, Uni¬ 
versal Purpose, Universal Action unfold alike in the 
tree and in the life of the man. Nothing can stay 
or hinder the expression of the Plan. 

The winds toss the tree from side to side; the 


ao WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT*? 


frost, for a season, may cause the life-forces to re¬ 
treat to the roots of the tree, but when the sun shines 
and the spring returns, the work of growth and 
evolution goes on. All the strain caused by wind, 
storm and frost was only the opportunity offered 
to the tree to test its strength. The pressure of 
environment and all other apparent adverse in¬ 
fluences were simply the necessary conditions for 
man to grapple with, and grow strong mentally and 
physically in the overcoming. 

So it is in the life of man. There are seasons 
when the pressure of environment, the action of which 
seems hostile, apparently suspends all activities 
making for growth, and all that was living seems 
as though it were dead. But the spring-time of 
the Spirit returns; life is renewed by the presence 
of God, and the growth, the evolution goes on ever 
outward but ever upward. Into the tree, into the 
life has been written the perfect Plan, the absolute 
Ideal of what both must become. There can be noth¬ 
ing short of this, there can be nothing less than this 
in the outer expression of the growth of both. The 
stalwart trunk of the tree, sending out its great 
overhanging branches covered with a wealth of foli¬ 
age, fills the mind with a sense of strength and 
beauty—a strength and a beauty that are not of 
the earth, earthy; but which stand representative of 


THE UNDYING IDEAL 


21 


the Spirit which lives in the tree and of which the 
tree is the full outer embodiment. 

There is a something about the man who, pressing 
heavenward, has attained to a God-consciousness, 
that suggests divinity shining through the eyes 
of humanity; an expression of the Spirit of God, 
the only animating force in the life of man. Yes, 
the storms and the winds of adversity may beat upon 
the life of man and, for a time, the mists and the 
fogs too, may shut out the everlasting Sunshine; 
but it will be only for a day, for a season, because 
the spirit within man is ever aspiring to reach out 
of and beyond all clouds, and all mists, to get away 
from the shadows and enter into the perpetual sun¬ 
shine of God’s Love and Wisdom. 

Higher and higher grows the tree, greater and 
farther-reaching grow its branches; its trunk is 
ever becoming larger and larger, and its roots hold¬ 
ing on firmly to Mother-earth until all that is in the 
Plan can be realized, until the tree has attained 
everything that it is possible for it to attain, every¬ 
thing that it is possible for it to express—the full 
measure of the Plan, the full expression of the tree 
in all its perfection of form and beauty. 

Man likewise in attaining the Christ-consciousness, 
still holds to the earth until every lesson, every¬ 
thing that the earth has to give to his life is under- 


22 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT 4 ? 


stood, until everything in the world' in which he 
lives is made subject to his own growth and develop¬ 
ment—a reaching-up yet ever-expanding that grows 
more and more into the heavens and yet becomes bet¬ 
ter and better adjusted to all its earthly environ¬ 
ment, so that the earth itself is beginning to take 
some of the radiance, some of the beauty that has 
disclosed itself in the life. At last touching, beau¬ 
tifying, uplifting everything, this life-giving Spirit 
in man becomes a transforming power to create out of 
its inner heaven a new earth, an earth wherein the 
law of God is as perfectly fulfilled as it is in Heaven, 
and man reaches the full consciousness, the true 
measure of a man on earth, and discloses the divine 
Plan that was conceived in the beginning. 

With all this attained, shall the end come? Shall 
the tree that has grown to its fullness and complete¬ 
ness perish and return to the elements? Shall the 
man who has realized something of the Omnipotence 
and Omnipresence of God return to the earth and 
become of the earth, earthy, enter into the elements 
and for ever pass away? No, the tree and the man 
live on; both express perfect ideals. Forms may 
change, forms may pass away, but the ideal lives 
forever; and the highest ideal attained either by the 
tree or the man is only the beginning, as it were, of 
new ideals yet to be attained; and every ideal sooner 


THE UNDYING IDEAL 


23 

or later must be fully and freely expressed. There 
is a continuity of ideals, there is a continuity of 
expression. Ideals are ever growing, ever expand¬ 
ing. One expression passes away only in order to 
be followed by a still greater expression. Life is a 
never-ending succession of ideals and expressions. 
We pass from one height of glory to still greater 
heights of glory. 

The ideal man was not made for the universe, 
but the universe was made for the man. “In my 
Father’s house are many mansions.” For the glory, 
and the wonder, and the beauty of this earth is one 
thing; and the glory, and the wonder, and the beauty 
of another world is another thing. One octave lived 
will be followed by a still higher octave of being. 
Man is ever tending from that which is little to that 
which is great, and from that which is great to that 
which is greater. There is no greatest; there is no 
ultimate, only eternal progress—eternal progress 
with its ever ascending scale. Now is eternity. 
There has never been beginning or ending, only Life, 
Love, Wisdom; only Plan, Ideal and Expression. 
The way of God is from everlasting to everlasting. 

In the great Forever God creates. In the great 
Forever is the Word. The Word that is with God, 
the Word that is God, is that Word which was writ¬ 
ten into the soul of man before the beginning of 


24 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

worlds, before the beginning of things. That Word 
was the Image and Likeness of God. That Word 
takes in all that is conceivable to us at the present, 
and all that is inconceivable. The Word that was 
without beginning and ending, which was with God 
and which is God. For God and man are one, one 
Spirit, one Life, one Intelligence, in all, through all, 
and above all, for God ever works within the life of 
man to will and to do. 

Man in his unfolding passes through more stages 
than anything or everything below him in the scale 
of creation. In his subconsciousness is contained 
countless ideals that have already been expressed. 
In his soul lie latent countless ideals yet to be ex¬ 
pressed, ideals as yet that are unknown and unreal¬ 
ized. 

Being born into this world, before taking up, as 
it were, a new life, there is a recapitulation of all the 
ideals that have been expressed in the past. It is as 
though it were necessary that the past achievements 
should be repeated in order to reinforce the mind 
for the greater achievements yet to come, the greater 
things yet to be accomplished. All the old ideals are 
there in consciousness and are lived over; and even 
while this is being done, new hopes, new desires, new 
plans are taking form and the work of a new creation 
is already beginning. For ideals are born only in 


THE UNDYING IDEAL 25 

order to be made manifest, to take form. They are 
the children of heart and mind that are yet to be 
embodied and take form on earth. 

Everything in life shows us that the ideal exists 
first and the form last; that man works as God 
works, from the inner to outer, from ideal to ex¬ 
pression. And with the coming of a new ideal, there 
can be no real satisfaction in the life until it begins 
to take form on earth. The greatest joy comes 
through the greatest power to express. Expression 
is an act of creation. 

Man, as a child of God, inherits both the creative 
heart and mind and though for a time, unconscious 
of such inheritance, he nevertheless begins to use it 
in a feeble way even in the elemental life. As a 
larger consciousness comes to him, his outer work is 
ever improving. Repeated effort after expression is 
constantly giving more perfect results. Through 
realizing more of the soul-vision, his mental vision 
expands, and greater ideals are constantly being 
projected into outer consciousness. 

In this way man is slowly creating his world ac¬ 
cording to a divine Plan. This creation is a con¬ 
tinuous process, but it has varying degrees of in¬ 
tensity. It has its spring-time and autumn; it has 
its summer and winter; but all serve their purpose 
and something is to be gained from each. 


26 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


The world at present is in a new spring-time. 
Its people are much in the same condition as is na¬ 
ture in the earth’s spring-time. Everything is in 
a state of motion; each day brings fresh changes; 
there is mystery all around. The buds on the tree 
of Life are swelling, but as yet we cannot tell w T hat 
the leaves are to be. There is anticipation, unrest, 
a longing and a striving after something which 
seems almost intangible. The ideal is as yet only in 
the early morning; the sun has, as yet, not appeared. 
Nevertheless the shadows of night are passing, and 
with each succeeding moment there will come in¬ 
creasing light. 

But the mists and the shadows exist all over the 
lower parts of life’s landscape. On the hill-tops 
there is the brightness and the glow of the coming 
sun, which is yet to flood the whole earth with light 
and beauty far beyond what the vision of man has 
yet been able to perceive. 

No one should deplore the world’s unrest. The 
great world is in a state of travail for the birth of 
still greater ideals. It is the Spirit of God moving 
on the face of the deep, stirring all souls into a new 
activity. The spring-time may prophesy but dimly 
of what the summer-time and later, the harvest, 
shall be. We may not know the full outcome, but 
we do know that the great unrest must result in 


THE UNDYING IDEAL 


27 

great activities, and great activities can come only 
through new and living ideals. It is the same with 
the nations of the world as it is with individuals. 
The longing desire brings its own fulfillment. 

All over the world battles of one kind or another 
are impending. The nations that have been asleep 
for thousands of years are waking up. While we 
must deplore the strife that is going on between na¬ 
tion and nation, and between mass and class within 
each nation, yet we must not be deceived by the ap¬ 
pearance of things or think for a moment that there 
is any retrogression to the savagery of bygone ages. 
No, there is something larger taking place, some¬ 
thing fraught with a greater meaning than has ever 
taken place in the past. It is the great struggle for 
freedom, for justice and equity, and the world is 
really awakening to a new order of things. 

The old order passeth. War, revolution and 
bloodshed still prevail, but there is an ever-increas¬ 
ing army the world over, which is making for peace, 
and is causing its influence to be felt world-wide; 
and it will not be long before the purely physical 
way of settling disputes between nations, or between 
bodies of people within nations, will be entirely done 
away with. This twentieth century will see an end 
of all physical war. 

All this war, revolution, and unrest means only 


28 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


that the world is passing through its darkest hour, 
the hour just before dawn, the great final clash be¬ 
tween the real forces of good and the false forces 
of evil; but as the light grows on apace the good 
must triumph, the light must overcome the dark¬ 
ness, the good must overcome the evil, and out of 
chaos must come law and order, peace and good will. 

The last twenty-five years have been prolific of 
great changes but far greater changes are near at 
hand. Materialism has had its day. There is no 
longer a materialistic science. In its quest after 
knowledge of God, science has outstripped the 
Church, but even the Church is coming to see that, 
if it would live and be a power for good in the 
world, it must adopt new ideas and express those 
ideas through new ways and means. Men and 
women can no longer be held in bondage to obsolete 
creeds or beliefs. Their lives can no longer be lim¬ 
ited by dead forms and ceremonials. 

The new religion of life is to be a vital one, in¬ 
spiring the hearts and minds of men to true, unself¬ 
ish effort, not for the good of any one sect or even 
nation, but for an all-embracing good that will make 
for the uplift of humanity as a whole. 

A few men and women the world over are begin¬ 
ning to realize the great Brotherhood of humanity; 
that all nations and all people are members one of 


THE UNDYING IDEAL 


29 

another; that all draw their life from one Source of 
Life; that all are guided and directed by a Supreme 
Intelligence, and that with this Life and Intelligence 
there is no respect of persons. People who are 
realizing this the world over become the standard- 
bearers of new ideas that shall revolutionize the 
whole earth. Every true ideal sooner or later must 
find its expression; every true ideal held to by its 
followers, becomes a mighty magnet to attract to it 
still other followers, and with each new accession 
the magnet becomes more powerful. 

It is a much more easy task to fight and to destroy 
an army of men than to fight against living ideals. 
The ideals of the crucified Jesus appeal to more 
people now and have greater power now than when 
He in the body proclaimed them, and His ideals are 
many thousand times more powerful for good to¬ 
day than they were nineteen hundred years ago. 
Indeed it may be said of a very truth that He lives 
more in the world to-day than He did when He 
walked in the streets of Jerusalem nearly two thou¬ 
sand years ago. You may destroy the bodies of 
men but their ideals live on. 

It may seem like a contradiction to say that there 
never was a time since the birth of Jesus when His 
Gospel of peace and good-will had such a strong hold 
in the hearts and minds of people $s it has at the 


30 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

present; nevertheless at no time in the last two thou¬ 
sand years, have such a large number of people 
worked so earnestly and fervently for the peace of 
the earth as are thus engaged in working at the 
present moment. 

The nation that is true to its highest ideals has 
a far greater protection than any army or navy 
could give it. It is protected by eternal laws and 
must, of a necessity, continue to remain one of the 
greatest among the family of nations. And the 
individual who lives his ideals according to his best 
light, is the one who is going to get a far greater 
degree of satisfaction in life, than the individual who 
sees and yet fails to live them. 

Living the ideal by a nation or an individual 
brings its own reward. Failure to live it, brings 
also its own punishment. All condemnation and 
judgment, whether of nation or of individual, is 
meted out because of failure to give expression to 
the living ideal. Ideals come into being only in 
order to be lived, in order to be expressed. Living 
ideals will conquer the world in a way that Alex¬ 
ander the Great was never able to conquer it. 

Forms change and pass away. Great ideals live 
on for ever. 


CHAPTER IV 


man’s potential powers 

rflHERE are powers and possibilities latent or po- 
A tential in the life of man, far beyond any that 
he has as yet developed. For we should understand 
that man is, as yet, only in the infancy of his devel¬ 
opment. In his upward trend, the way has been 
long and hard, experience having been his greatest 
teacher; he has thought of himself as being sub¬ 
ject to environment, circumstances, and almost 
everything else; he has longed for greater power 
in order to enjoy greater freedom. At first he 
thought that he should acquire the needed power 
through physical ways and means; that the forces 
he wished to invoke were all external to his life; but 
experience is showing him that what he has sought 
for so long and so diligently, is to be found only 
within his own conscious life. So a new quest is 
begun, a new search after the Holy Grail—the life- 
giving cup, for the Living Waters are found within , 
and to him who is athirst let him take of the Waters 
of Life and drink freely. 

Slowly but surely man is coming into his rightful 
31 


32 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

inheritance, his true birthright. Slowly but surely 
he is gaining the true mastery; henceforth he is to 
be the master, not the servant, in the world in which 
he lives. All must yield—everything must become 
subject to him; his body must respond to every new 
vibration of mind and soul; his body must become 
a perfect symbol of a perfected consciousness. 
Weakness and disease of body are at best only transi¬ 
tory conditions in the life of man—the contradicto¬ 
ries through which man comes to know that only 
health and strength are real. 

The enlightened mind will discard false desires 
and overcome old habits; and all sense-desire will 
come under true mental direction and control; there 
will be no over-indulgence in eating or in drinking; 
neither will there be any excess in any other direc¬ 
tion, for the thoroughly poised mind can never ex¬ 
press itself in anything which savors of intemper¬ 
ance. In a natural way everything in life should 
have its true use, but nothing should ever be abused 
or put to a false or an unnatural use. 

The body is what the mind makes it. The thor¬ 
oughly enlightened and self-controlled person knows 
that this is so; and he knows too, that the body is 
at best only a temple for mind and soul, but a tem¬ 
ple that should be beautiful and symmetrical in form, 
as well as strong and enduring in construction; that 


MAN’S POTENTIAL POWERS 33 

this temple is an outer expression of thought and 
feeling; that it symbolizes both what the man feels 
and thinks, whether it be good or ill. 

In the past we have written into the physical or¬ 
ganism all our superficial emotional life. The mind 
has been filled with fears and doubts; fear and doubt 
not only paralyze mental activity but dissipate phys¬ 
ical vitality. These two false emotions, which 
mother a brood of kindred spirits, poison the mind, 
and this in turn expresses itself as physical poison 
in the body, bringing disease and disintegration of 
the body in its wake. 

Fear is really at the bottom of all our troubles, 
be they mental or physical. We are afraid of peo¬ 
ple; we are afraid of our environment; envy, hatred, 
malice, jealousy, pride are a few of the many false 
emotions engendered by fear. If we allow these false 
emotions to control us they will interfere with our 
every success, blighting, hindering and preventing 
us from what we might become. Fear is a state of 
mental darkness, wherein we are unable to perceive 
anything in its true proportion or its right relation., 
It acts like the clouds that come between the earth 
and the sun shutting out the light, and thus it 
comes between our minds and the indwelling pres¬ 
ence of God, so that the things we would not we do, 
and the things that we should do are left undone. 


I 


34 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

Fear is the nightmare of the mind, and to give it 
reality is to bring us in bondage to it. We are 
bond-men and bond-women so long as we are under 
its blighting sway. 

Only as the light of truth and the presence of 
love find abiding places in our mind, shall we be able 
to overcome the shadows of fear and leave them far 
behind. For be it known that, pressing steadfastly 
toward the light, all shadows are left behind. 

The great man or the great woman can be great 
only as they are free. When one has entered into 
the real freedom of life, every fear will have been 
dissipated; and life will become filled with a beauty 
and a harmony never known while we were in a state 
of bondage to unreasoning fears. A life may be 
filled with an ever-increasing wonder and glory, an 
ever-increasing joy and peace, when the Spirit wdthin 
us is realized as the controlling factor in life. We 
can, if we will, come consciously under the law of 
the Spirit of Life, and free ourselves from the old 
law of fear which resulted in sin and death. 

The old law was not a divine or a God-made law, 
but a law of the carnal or partial mind, a state of 
consciousness which is partial or incomplete. It was 
consciousness which had solely to do with man’s ob¬ 
jective life, that he perceived through his sense- 
nature, and afterwards thought and reasoned about. 


MAN’S POTENTIAL POWERS 35 

This made the mind of the flesh or the mind of the 
world, but not the mind of the Spirit; this is but 
consciousness into which fear, sin, and death enter. 
In this mind everything is changing; all people and 
all things are transitory; death is as certain as life; 
sin abounds more than righteousness; disease is as 
natural as health; 44 for the carnal mind is at enmity 
with God and is not subject to His law, neither in¬ 
deed can be.” 44 For when that which is whole is 
come, then that which is in part shall be done 
away.” 

With the coming of the consciousness of the law 
of the Spirit of Life, old things and old conditions 
pass away and all becomes new. Life is eternal; 
health is a natural condition; worries, difficulties, 
sorrows cease, we have passed from death unto life. 

It may seem strange to some that a new order of 
feeling, and a new way of thinking and looking on 
life, in fact a new consciousness is going to destroy 
every evil and every discord of the past and bring 
soul, mind, and body into conscious peace, joy and 
health; and besides making mind and body whole and 
strong, that it is also going to beautify and trans¬ 
form all nature, so that our environment, instead of 
exerting too great a pressure, will become to us an 
abiding source of pleasure and happiness. 

Yes, the dream of the alchemist, the vision of a 


36 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT 1 ? 

St. John or a Swendenborg shall become realized in 
our daily lives. Let it be known that the most won¬ 
derful dreams or visions that have ever entered into 
the heart or mind of man are capable of perfect 
realization, of perfect fulfillment. When we were 
carried to and fro by the consciousness of the carnal 
mind, we were under countless limitations. Under 
the sway of the law of the Spirit of life there is not 
only freedom, but there are also opportunities and 
possibilities on every side awaiting only our rec¬ 
ognition—powers and possibilities which, in their 
using, will open up for us a life that shall be filled 
with a wonder and glory far beyond any conception 
that we have been able to picture in mind or to real¬ 
ize for ourselves in the past. 

In the past, through ignorance, or rather through 
lack of understanding we have done many things in 
wrong or mistaken ways; in the future, we shall not 
even make mistakes, because then we shall not only 
understand life’s laws, but we shall know that all 
our happiness is to come through obedience to them. 
We shall not do some things well and neglect other 
things, but all will be done in that lawful and orderly 
way that will make for perfection in everything. 
Those who think that perfection is unattainable I 
would refer to the Master’s words :—“ Be ye perfect 
even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Inner 


MAN’S POTENTIAL POWERS 37 

perfection, be it remembered, is always evidenced in 
outer act. The outer act is a symbol of inner 
thought and feeling; the kindly smile, the friendly 
grasp of the hand, the sympathetic look are the 
outer visions of inner realities. 

If the body gives response in ways like this, then 
the body responds in every way to mind and soul. 
What we have said about the superficial conscious¬ 
ness of fear as producing poison, we will affirm 
doubly over, in the case of love, and faith, of hope 
and joy, namely, that they produce health and 
strength-giving qualities far, far in excess of any or 
all superficial emotions which weaken or disintegrate. 
This will be so thoroughly understood in the near 
future, that no one will resort to any medicine or 
to any physician no matter to what school of phy¬ 
sicians he may belong. 

People who at present believe in mental healing, 
and who use it in preference to materia medica, will 
know that the Healer is within their own conscious¬ 
ness; that the faith and joy in them will make for 
both mental and physical health so that such a thing 
as a diseased body will be literally unknown. 

At present we waste a great deal of sympathy 
over people who are sick and diseased; this sym¬ 
pathy never strengthens or uplifts. All pain and 
disease are evidences that the life is not being lived 


38 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT*? 

in conformity with its laws, or that one is uncon¬ 
sciously or willfully disobeying the law. 

The time is coming when people will be ashamed 
to be sick, knowing, as all will then know, that sick¬ 
ness is an expression either of ignorance or of willful 
disobedience to all the laws of life. The present 
satisfaction that people get from talking over and 
magnifying their ills to others will be a thing of the 
past, because people will no longer receive the morbid 
sympathy that now the sufferer covets so eagerly; 
and diseases will not be transmitted from one person 
to another as they are now, simply because the sound, 
but really weak-minded person becomes negative 
through his morbid sympathy, and in this state takes 
on the mental and physical conditions of the sick 
person, thus becoming a mere reflector of other peo¬ 
ple’s false thoughts and feelings. 

Each person will make his own adjustment to life; 
he will know exactly what he wishes to do and how 
to do it. He will become simply a reflector of the 
strength, the health, the happiness of humanity; 
and while receiving in this way, he will in no degree 
lessen to others what he is receiving from them. 
We know that, in catching another person’s cold or 
catching a disease of any nature from another, one 
does not lessen to any degree in the other person 
the disease caught from him; on the contrary, the 


MAN’S POTENTIAL POWERS 39 

disease has simply increased and widened its scope. 
Now that which holds good in a false way is really 
more certain in its action in a true way. Whatever 
we may draw from another life that is good and true, 
while enriching us, in no way impoverishes the giver; 
but if we would continue to reap its benefits we must 
give of it just as freely as we have received. Good 
comes into the life only in order to be used; in order 
to be retained and the supply increased there should 
be a constant out-flow, because without it there can 
be no constant influx. “ Give and ye shall receive.” 

We should also know now that there is a far 
greater and truer contagion, whereby receptive 
minds acquire mental hope and uplift, physical health 
and strength from the mentally and physically 
strong, than people are conscious of. Nearly every¬ 
one has had the experience of having been brought 
in contact with some bright, joyous, strong mind, 
and of having felt its influence for hours and per¬ 
haps days afterwards. Such a person is continu¬ 
ally sowing the seed of hope and joy, of health and 
strength; and yet in no way is he the loser, for while 
he gives out freely and spontaneously on one hand, 
yet on the other he is receiving in as free and spon¬ 
taneous a way because of his giving. 

To the mind that is fully alive, new possibilities 
are continually awakening, possibilities that can be 


4 o WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

actualized through untiring, intelligent effort. No 
desire, no aspiration that enters into the mind of 
man is incapable of expression. We but limit our¬ 
selves when we talk of the impossible. All things 
are possible. The most wonderful ideal is capable 
of being expressed. As sons and daughters of God, 
all things are ours. Everything awaits only a reali¬ 
zation on our part. We are to possess all things, 
but not to be possessed by them. Our possession 
is not to be of that kind which hoards up, where it 
is of benefit neither to one’s self nor to any one else, 
but of that kind which we use freely, not only for 
our own good but for the good of others. Every¬ 
thing is ours, and everything is ours now , so that 
there is no need of storing up for a rainy day. Such 
storing up shows that we are depending rather upon 
our own resources than on the great Universal Giver. 

Surely the story of the children of Israel in the 
desert, who day by day were fed by an ever-fresh 
supply of manna, teaches us this lesson, for when 
those who were not satisfied with the supplying of 
their daily needs, collected more than was necessary, 
it was found that, on the morrow, it was not fit for 
food, and the gatherer’s labor had been lost. 

A part of the Gospel of the Nazarene was that we 
were not to hoard up worldly riches; that we were 
to take no anxious thought for the morrow; that 


MAN’S POTENTIAL POWERS 41 

God was more willing to give than we to receive; 
that it was only a question of putting ourselves in 
right adjustment, when every inner and outer need 
would be supplied. The hoarding up indicates a 
crystallizing state of mind, a centering, a con¬ 
centration on material things. Why should any one 
do this? Will not the great Father provide as much 
for our future wants as for our present needs? 
Does not the storing up only add to our responsi¬ 
bilities? If we have in our hands vast possessions, 
are we not accountable to God and man as to how 
those possessions are used? We may think that we 
are caring for the generation to come, but in doing 
so, are we not trying to usurp the Divine Power? 
We are told that every good and every perfect gift 
is from God, that the whole wealth, whether it be 
outer or inner, resides in the One who said, “ The 
cattle on a thousand hills are mine.” 

He who, day by day, uses soul, mind, and body to 
their full capacity will never know a material want. 
“ The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” 
and this fullness is always awaiting intelligent 
thought and effort so that one’s every need may be 
met at any time or all times. “ He that putteth his 
trust in the Lord shall not want any good thing.” 

When the world comes to see that real riches and 
real possessions are found within, and turns with 


42 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

the same strong desire for the acquisition of the 
inner riches as it now possesses for material things, 
then it will not be long before God’s kingdom shall 
be made manifest on earth. 


CHAPTER V 


REAL AND UNREAL EMOTIONS 

TT is much easier for one to retain health and 
strength of body than it is to regain them. 
The ounce of prevention is always worth the pound 
of cure. Forethought saves us from many mistakes 
from which afterthought, be it ever so wise, cannot 
save us. The afterthought may save for the future, 
but the forethought saves in the present. If I seem 
to dwell on the negative side of life for a little time, 
let it be understood that I do this only in order to 
make a contrast. The negative side I use only as 
the background to make the real picture of life clear 
and distinct. We should know the negative only in 
order to replace it by the positive. We should know 
of ignorance only in order to make it knowledge; 
we should know of disease only in order to make it 
health. The negative side of life has to do with the 
outer darkness. Ignorance, sin, sorrow, pain, dis¬ 
ease are nothing in and of themselves, only seeming 
conditions to be overcome by the light of truth; and 
yet, even the seeming conditions are endowed with 
power, and the mind of man becomes filled with fear 
43 


44 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

concerning them, a fear that as we feel it, involves 
both mental and physical torment. There are manjj 
false emotions, there are many negative-thoughts 
that we endow with power which they do not pos¬ 
sess. But because we believe in and fear this sup¬ 
posed power, mind and body are acted upon much 
the same as if the power were a real one, and all 
the false thought-pictures conjured up by the mind, 
as well as all the unreal emotions, picture themselves 
on man’s physical organism till it stands as repre¬ 
sentative of pain, disease and death rather than the 
true representative of harmony, health and life. 

We are continually serving two masters when we 
should be giving loyal allegiance to but one. We 
seem to be swayed between two forces; at times the 
force that makes for good and at other times the 
force that makes for evil. There is one force and 
one alone; and that force is ever making for greater 
light; for greater knowledge, for everything that 
will bring health and strength to the world. The 
whole question is one of relation, of adjustment, of 
adaptation. When we learn to see and to know 
aright, then we shall act aright. Every false 
thought-picture, every unreal emotion can be over¬ 
come, can be replaced by a true thought-picture, 
by a real emotion. A real thought-picture, and a 
real emotion bring with them renewed light and 


REAL AND UNREAL EMOTIONS 45 

power to dispel the false. It is a question, too, of 
overcoming; overcoming the darkness with light; 
overcoming the ignorance with knowledge; overcom¬ 
ing disease with health; overcoming weakness with 
strength. 

Fundamentally one of the greatest mistakes in the 
way of life comes from looking at ourselves as sin¬ 
ners, out-casts from God, children who are in rebel¬ 
lion against the Father, when the real fact is that 
we are as yet able to see in only a limited and partial 
way. We are lacking in knowledge, the knowledge 
which comes only through living life. In so far as 
any of us have traveled along life’s pathway, though 
we may have erred in our judgments and suffered 
from so doing, nevertheless, whatever we have gained 
is only that which is good, that which is lasting. 
Whatever we have gained has been done in spite of 
our sins or mistakes, and to the degree that we have 
made progress, we have left the sin and ignorance 
behind. Man is ever pressing steadfastly toward 
life, toward a knowledge of truth. All his sins and 
all his mistakes, when seen and understood in their 
right relation, have only been stepping-stones to 
greater knowledge, to truer understanding. Man is 
neither a worm of the dust nor a miserable sinner. 
He has never been and never will be one or the other. 
But believing himself to be both, he has tried to play 


46 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

the part. His effort to do this has brought the ex¬ 
perience, and the lessons flowing from such experi¬ 
ence, were necessary to show him a better way. As 
in the parable of the Prodigal Son, while going fur¬ 
ther and further away from love and light, yet he 
never loses the consciousness of the Father and the 
Father’s home. In man’s deepest and darkest night 
there is still the consciousness and desire for light, 
and with the coming of the light will a fuller ap¬ 
preciation come because of the time when there was 
absence of light. As we meet every unreal condi¬ 
tion in life and overcome it, we leave the unreal 
thing behind. It can no longer hinder or hamper the 
life, and so, in going steadfastly toward the light, 
we are leaving all the unreal shadows behind. We 
have been made unhappy, discordant, and sick be¬ 
cause of the shadows, the shadows that were cast 
before us when our backs were turned to the light, 
when we were looking down instead of up. Stand¬ 
ing in the light and looking up we become uncon¬ 
scious of shadows. 

The battle that each and all of us are fighting is 
made up largely of the enemies which live in our own 
household. We might call them the ghosts of false 
thoughts and unreal emotions. These ghosts have 
many names and seem very real, but they live only 
in the night, in the darkness; they can only be seen 


REAL AND UNREAL EMOTIONS 47 

when the light is absent. They have nothing to do 
with light, with love, with truth; and with the in¬ 
coming of light, love, and truth they are seen no 
more. The mother of the whole brood is known as 
fear, and the father is ignorance. The elder chil¬ 
dren are called by such names as hate, anger, malice, 
envy, jealousy, doubt and despair; while the younger 
ones are worry, anxiety, fault-finding, carelessness, 
heartlessness; in fact, whenever you find the syllable 
“ less 99 in any word, it bears a close relation to this 
particular family. The children of light use the 
syllable “ full ”; faithful, healthful, beautiful. So 
you will see that the real, the living entities always 
express fullness, while the others always express lack. 
They are all less than they should be, faithless in¬ 
stead of faithful. The introduction of any one true 
thing means the instant expulsion of the false thing, 
but because at one time or another people believe 
and give reality to the unreal ghosts of their own 
minds, they apparently suffer quite as much as if 
they were real; and so on the body we have the shad¬ 
ows coming in turn from these unreal things. We 
say that the body is in pain, that it is diseased, that 
the different organs of the body do not function as 
they should, that the blood no longer circulates 
evenly to all parts of the body, and that in its 
circulation it is carrying poison instead of health, 


48 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

disintegration instead of creative energy. Then we 
resort to all kinds of ways and means but the right 
ones to overcome this outer physical condition, little 
thinking, perhaps, that we have set in motion all the 
causes that have produced the pain and disease of 
the body. What remedy, what potion must one 
take to overcome fear? What medicine administer 
for ignorance? What surgery for anger or hate? 
Says the medical man, let us overcome the poisons 
in the system by the introduction of still other 
poisons; and sometimes, when inflammation exists, 
the surgeon says: let us take away the organ in order 
that the body may be made whole again. But when 
the organ is removed, the body has become something 
less than it was before and so is never able again to 
function in the way the Creator intended it. Blind 
leaders of the blind, trying to overcome darkness 
with darkness, trying to fight shadows with shadows. 
There is something within the life of man that will 
overcome all his mental darkness; there is something 
within the life of man that will overcome all his bodily 
pain and disease. But if a man’s enemies are of his 
own household or of his own making, he has also 
God-given attributes of soul and faculties of mind 
able to meet with and overcome any or all enemies. 
No matter how much the body may suffer man can 
bring strength out of weakness, health out of dis- 


REAL AND UNREAL EMOTIONS 49 

ease, joy out of sorrow, just as soon as he turns to 
that Light which is within him, that Light which is 
to enlighten every man that cometh into the world. 
When the Light shines, then there are disclosed the 
real children, the real friends of one’s household. 
If fear has torment, love casts out all fear. If ig¬ 
norance seems to be a barrier to progress, then re¬ 
member that ignorance is only mental negation and 
is possessed of no power other than we give to it. 
With the incoming of wisdom, ignorance is gone. 
Love and Wisdom will banish every enemy that man 
may believe himself to be afflicted with; Love and 
Wisdom bring with them their true followers, 
faith, hope, joy, peace, understanding, gentleness, 
goodness, kindness; each one a worker to uplift, 
to strengthen, to give comfort; each one a helper to 
bring victory out of seeming defeat. And with their 
coming the whole life has become renewed and quick¬ 
ened, and the body is prompt to respond. All the 
poison in the blood is eliminated; every organ of the 
body functions in its natural way. The body then 
knows nothing of weakness or pain, only of an ever- 
renewing health and strength, and becomes a per¬ 
fect organ to fulfill whatever heart and mind re¬ 
quire of it. Does it sound like a fairy story? Then 
let me tell you that it is a true one, but true only 
to those who are willing to accept it as true, and in 


50 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

accepting act it out and believe in it as faithfully 
as they ever believed in the old law of sin and death, 
of fear and hate, of weakness and disease. Man can¬ 
not serve the old law of sin and death, and the new 
law of the Spirit of Life. He must make his choice; 
he may serve one but not both. He cannot divide 
his allegiance between the two, but has power within 
himself to decide as to what his choice shall be. For 
a season he may serve the old law and reap all the 
pain and sorrow from so doing, but only for a season, 
because each experience acts to show the futility of 
this prostitution of mind to some ignoble purpose. 
Each false emotion that cuts off one’s light and 
devitalizes mind and body, contains for the individual 
a lesson just as real as that which the child learns 
who thrusts his fingers into the fire. All our ex¬ 
periences are lessons. Out of the lessons come 
knowledge, and knowledge eventually becomes trans¬ 
muted into wisdom. Nothing is lost; all that is 
called evil serves its end; everything has its place 
and its meaning in the eternal Plan. The people 
who sit in darkness, are, to some degree, longing for 
the light. The people whose bodies are physically 
diseased are longing for help, and this longing or 
desire is the first step towards the light, towards 
health. So it makes no difference w T here man is in 
his varying stages of development; that which is 


REAL AND UNREAL EMOTIONS 51 

least developed will become more developed; that 
which is highly developed will meet with a still 
greater development. In life everything is grow¬ 
ing ; everything is pushing upward, demanding more 
light. And while at times the darkness seems a 
never-ending and an increasing darkness, yet the 
darkest night of human understanding has its dawn 
just as surely as night is followed by morning. 
And just so surely shall man also come into the 
light of an everlasting day. 

Let no one be discouraged because they feel them¬ 
selves unequal to live all they are able to perceive 
in this new way. Every honest endeavor, every ef¬ 
fort no matter how small, if made in the right di¬ 
rection is going to bring good results. When new 
desires and aspirations enter the mind, they are con¬ 
fronted by the old desires and by habits established 
in the past. This is the battle ground wherein the 
victory is sometimes on one side and sometimes on 
the other. This is the place for testing one’s 
strength, and with each victory of the new over the 
old, there comes not only added strength but a new 
hope, a new courage that makes one feel able to do 
still greater things. What matters it if one meets 
with a momentary defeat? The defeat should be¬ 
come only a means of pointing out some weakness or 
some mistake to the end that one may be better 


52 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT 1 ? 

equipped on renewing the battle for real dominion. 

Never let the mind become despondent or doubt¬ 
ful about ultimate success. Hold persistently to the 
ideas that you can and that you will become all that 
you wish to become. One should never allow one¬ 
self to be deceived by thinking that there can be 
any other way to physical health and strength, or 
to mental growth and development than that which 
comes through one’s own effort. Others may show 
us or tell us how effort can be best directed, but no 
one can make the effort for us. When we come to 
know the truth of this we shall see how useless it is 
to shirk, or try to avoid doing that which we must 
all know is to be done sooner or later. Procrasti¬ 
nation makes everything only more difficult of per¬ 
formance. The doing of a little and the doing of 
it well is always adding to that which goes to make 
the completed whole. We are always a little nearer 
the goal, a little nearer a realization of our ideals. 

The desire for physical wholeness is the starting 
point towards health, but all desire must be united 
with effort. When we desire anything, we should 
set mind and body to work in getting that which we 
desire. The body is not going to get well simply 
because we desire it, if we are putting forth no effort 
to that end. Thoughts of weakness, thoughts of 
disease, or of any or of all other kinds of discordant 


REAL AND UNREAL EMOTIONS 53 

thoughts, can never make for a whole, strong body, 
no matter what the desire may be, so long as the 
mind continues to be actuated by such thinking. 
The body, being only the negative on which the 
mind’s pictures are reflected, must necessarily ex¬ 
press that which the mind habitually thinks. Only 
by a change of thought, by a turning of the mind 
into its true channels wherein all thought-pictures 
are not only positive but constructive, and where, 
too, thought is reinforced by true feeling can any¬ 
one who chooses to follow in this way be sure of good 
results. Physical health may be fully and freely 
realized when we take the one way that is open, and 
steadily follow in that way. Picture in mind all that 
you wish to be or to do, picture in mind all that you 
wish the body to become, and then hold steadfastly 
in a persevering way to all that you have pictured, 
only seeking to add something more to the perfecting 
of your thought-pictures. In this way each ideal 
shall be realized, because every faculty of mind is 
strengthened through use, and as every faculty of 
mind corresponds to some organ of the body, with 
the strengthening of the mental faculty will come 
the responsive action in the corresponding bodily 
organ. When the whole mind functions in a law¬ 
ful, orderly way the whole physical organism will 
beat in perfect unison with the mind, and thus the 


54 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

body will have become the fit outer representative 
of the inner temple of mind and soul. 

We are not the architects so much as the builders 
of our lives. The Image and Likeness of God is the 
divine Plan written in the soul of man. We may 
know but little of this Plan, but if we are using the 
knowledge of which we are in possession, through 
such use a greater knowledge will continue to be 
disclosed to us. The Plan shows us by degrees what 
we should be and what we should do, but leaves to us 
the becoming and the doing. 

Whenever any one takes any single talent he may 
have developed and uses that to its full capacity, 
through such use the Plan is unfolded and a new 
talent is disclosed. Again when one lives and ex¬ 
presses all that is contained in this talent, still an¬ 
other will also unfold. This is a process by which 
the life within us is ever working to the accomplish¬ 
ment of definite ends and purposes for a complete 
outer manifestation of the inner Word. 

The person who will look at life as it is in reality 
should see nothing or know nothing that will in any 
way tend to discourage him or to fill his mind with 
doubt concerning life’s ultimate outcome, neither 
should he lose sight or under-estimate the responsi¬ 
bilities that must necessarily come and that can be 
assumed only by such as are engaged in the ex- 


REAL AND UNREAL EMOTIONS 55 

pression of a Plan that is to endure throughout 
eternity. Man does not yet fully realize that this 
is the one and only thing in life; that everything 
else which seems to be apart from this is working 
only to this particular end and purpose; that no 
matter what we may be engaged in doing, it has 
something to do with the inner development and the 
outer development of his life leading him towards 
“ that one far off divine Event to which the whole 
creation tends.” Man will some day come to see 
that there is no possible escape from his assuming 
all the responsibilities of living his own life from 
first to last, and that there is no possible way by 
which these responsibilities may be shifted so as to 
be borne by some one else, but that from A to Z he 
must work out the Plan that has been involved, in 
every detail, all the way from the Adam to the Christ, 
all the way from the earthly to the heavenly man, 
that in no way is it possible to avoid doing this, that 
it is more certain than anything else he can know or 
understand, in fact, that all knowledge and all un¬ 
derstanding have really to do with this one great pur¬ 
pose and object of life. When man knows this of a 
truth, he will more readily come to its acceptance 
and a consciously directed effort in the working out 
of his own salvation, salvation from pain and dis¬ 
ease, as well as his mind’s salvation from sin and 


56 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

unrest. It may be well, however, that such con¬ 
sciousness shall come in its own natural way and that 
one may not be able to impart of it to another until 
that other is able to receive. 

We cannot think of any degree or manifestation 
of life that is not fulfilling its design. Each stage 
that has unfolded is as perfect in its way as the 
stage to follow. It may be partial and incomplete, 
but in so far as it has been disclosed it conforms 
with the Plan, the Design. The seed is perfect as 
the seed. The elemental man is the most complex 
and perfected animal that has, as yet, been produced. 
He is not perfected in mental or spiritual knowledge, 
that is yet to come, but from the unit-cell up each 
thing, each form is perfected according to Design, 
according to Plan. In so far, then, as man has un¬ 
folded, the outer corresponds to the inner, but one 
stage reached is simply the beginning of a new and 
higher stage to follow. Everything is relative. 
The perfection of to-day does not necessarily mean 
the perfection of to-morrow. The whole visible cre¬ 
ation is the outer, the visible Word of God, and man, 
as Image and Likeness of God, must become the 
epitomized universe in physical form, the epitomized 
Spirit in mind and soul, fulfilling the perfect Plan, 
the divine Ideal. 


CHAPTER VI 


DESIRE AND WILL 

TF the student in quest of knowledge can only be¬ 
gin aright, seeing each thing in its true rela¬ 
tion to the whole, seeing each step that is taken as 
a forward one in the way of life, then day by day, 
his life will not only be made happier, but he will 
become more effective in everything he does. 

Acquire knowledge, acquire understanding, and 
then put knowledge and understanding into every¬ 
thing you do; for it is only in this way that your 
work can become a finished one. Life is worth liv¬ 
ing; furthermore, life must be lived. We can make 
life better worth the living if desire and will are 
unitedly working to one end, to one purpose. 

We should all remember that our lives are made 
up of little and of great things; that each day and 
each hour should bring to us something that will 
aid us in our search for knowledge, that will aid us 
in doing whatever work we may have to do in a 
better way than we have ever been able to do it in 
the past. We must learn to think for ourselves, 
and also to act for ourselves, acquire independence 


58 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

and self-reliance. Living our own lives and being 
true to our highest ideals will more than repay us 
for living life as it should be lived. 

Desire, like Will, enters into practically every¬ 
thing one has to do in life. That which we form in 
mind a desire for, will become the greatest factor in 
causing the desire to be realized. One’s desire is 
feeble when there is no corresponding action of the 
will; but whenever desire is strong, then with it there 
will also be the strong action of will. Desire relates 
itself to life in two ways: in the first place, it is the 
mind’s prayer for material possessions, not only to 
enjoy, but also to possess; desire to acquire, and de¬ 
sire to retain. The life of man is in a constant state 
of transition, and things that are necessary and good 
in one phase of this transition, later will be found 
not only unnecessary, but a positive hindrance to 
growth. 'All degrees of desire are good in their 
particular place or relation, so that outer desire is’ 
as necessary to a true understanding of life and its 
laws as inner desire. Outer desire relates itself to 
things, inner desire relates itself to qualities. 
Eventually we come to know that in the wilderness 
of external desires what we are seeking for is 
not to be found, or if found is only of a fleeting 
or a transitory nature. Material possessions, no 
matter how great, can never fully satisfy the mind 


DESIRE AND WILL 


59 

of man, as at best they are but symbols or an outer 
expression of the inner riches. When the mind be¬ 
comes absorbed in the accumulation of outer riches 
it loses its conscious touch with the Indwelling Spirit. 
This quest, however, is not to be deplored, because in 
time we learn the lesson that the real joy of life 
can never come through the possession of any or 
of all material things, that outer things only sym¬ 
bolize inner realities, that the real quest is not one 
of possession, but rather the realization of inner 
powers that are not to be used to acquire still greater 
possessions, but rather to give expression to our 
every ideal in the world in which we live, that in 
doing this our minds are quickened and renewed, and 
we have added something to the world’s riches 
through what we have been able to express. 

It is in the nature of things that one should be 
disappointed in worldly possession, in order that at 
last, true inner desire shall enter one’s conscious¬ 
ness. If we are satisfied in our worldly possessions 
then there would be no incentive, and so all the way 
through life, the gratification of one desire realized 
leaves us with another desire yet unfulfilled, and we 
continue to hope that the fulfillment of it will bring 
to us health, or the happiness, or the joy of life we 
so ardently desire. 

All is not gold that glitters; that which while in 


6o WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


the perspective looks so enchanting and so much to 
be desired, when we come to view it near at hand, as 
something that we really possess, often loses some¬ 
thing of its enchantment, something of its first power 
over us, and we think w T e have made a mistake in ac¬ 
quiring what we have and something new attracts 
our attention, a new desire takes the place of the 
old; and thus we go through life attaining desires 
only to be disappointed when they are attained, be¬ 
cause of the urge of the inner life; because man can 
never become fully satisfied in living the life that 
deals only with forms, with effects; he desires to 
know that which is real and that which is lasting, 
while all forms change and pass away. Things come 
and things go; life and its laws abide. 

The real quest in life is not for that which is . 
changing or that which is passing, but for that which 
is changeless, for that which is eternal. Every phase 
of desire is necessary to the person who finds him¬ 
self in that phase; for his desire of the present 
shall become a stepping-stone to some new form of 
desire, and out of the wilderness of earthly desire, 
man will find his way to a heavenly desire which will 
thoroughly satisfy his life. 

Strong, undoubting desire brings quick realiza¬ 
tion, whether it be for material things, or for spir¬ 
itual understanding. What we get out of life, de- 


DESIRE AND WILL 61 

pends upon what we put into it, or what we bring 
to it, we reap only that which we have sown. 

Feeble, procrastinating, doubtful desire will fail 
to bring either material or spiritual riches. 

Strong, faithful, persevering desire will always ex¬ 
press itself in energetic action and one will be re¬ 
warded according to one’s desire. Our desires serve 
as magnets to attract to us all that we long for; if 
the magnets are strong, then the response is certain; 
a great desire can be as surely realized as a small 
one. In the world of forms, all things are ours, 
but until we ardently desire them, we do not enter 
into their full possession. Whatever we desire with 
heart and mind, we become at once willing to work 
for, and it is this mental and physical action which 
brings a sure and a certain return. 

We should never do anything in a half-hearted 
way. Some may tell you that it is wrong to use 
mind and body for the acquisition of material 
wealth, but they are mistaken. The person who uses 
both strong desire and energetic action in the ac¬ 
quiring of worldly riches, will later transmute that 
desire and action in the same strong way into spirit¬ 
ual desire for the accumulation of the inner riches of 
life. The man who renders to Caesar the things 
that are Caesar’s, will later render to God the things 
that are God’s. 


62 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


There are no experiences in life that are unnec¬ 
essary. Every experience we pass through in life 
carries within itself a lesson that if once acquired 
need never again be repeated. 

Relate will to every desire. Your will becomes 
strong or weak according as you use or abuse your 
thoughts in shaping your desires. If your thoughts 
are clear, if they are to the point, then because of this, 
there will be a strong action of will. Whenever the 
mind is thoroughly centered on what one is doing, 
then will becomes a real force in the doing. Will is 
something more than an individual power; will is 
Universal. It is Will that causes the seed to ex¬ 
pand; it is Will that works out the Plan that has 
been written into the seed; it is Will that causes the 
fish to swim and the birds to fly; it is Will that 
causes each flower to draw from the sun the color it 
chooses to adorn itself with; it is Will in action that 
causes the honey-bee to construct its cell for the 
holding of the honey in the strongest geometrical 
way; it is Will that enters into all life and expresses 
itself through multiplicity of degrees and diversity 
of forms. Will is Universal; one Will is in all; but 
while this is true, it is possible according to the de¬ 
gree of intelligence we are in possession of, to use 
this Universal Will in such a way that it shall not 
only accomplish for us the things that we at pres- 


DESIRE AND WILL 63 

ent desire to do, but because of its use, it will become 
an ever-increasing factor in life, so that each suc¬ 
ceeding day, month, and year will bring increased 
will, increased power in all that we are, and in all 
that we do. 

People who allow their thoughts to run riot, who 
make no effort to center or control them, are very 
much in the same position as the one who scatters 
seed by the wayside. There is or can be no return; 
the thought is just as much wasted as the seed, for 
if one would derive real benefits they must not only 
think clearly, but keep their minds thoroughly cen¬ 
tered on what they are thinking or doing. 

In order to get the greatest amount of good, one 
must learn to choose, to select one’s thoughts, as it 
were, to become thoroughly controlled in mind, so 
that at any moment he may be able to give his best 
thought and action to what he is doing. In every¬ 
thing we do, in everything we refrain from doing, 
Will acts; we will to do or we will to refrain from 
doing. One should know that the greatest strength 
comes from doing; that will becomes powerful when 
one’s mind is thoroughly focused on its work. In 
order to get this focus one must be thoroughly 
interested in his work; work should be a source of 
happiness, but it can be a source of happiness only 
to the one who is in love with his work; there can be 


64 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

no happiness when one is not taking interest, and is 
doing his work in a slovenly way, so that the min¬ 
utes and hours drag, and mind and body grow 
weary. 

One who would have will to carry him through 
every emergency in life must be able to think, and 
think clearly and connectedly. There is no greater 
obstacle in the way of success than a person who 
allows his mind to become filled with conflicting, con¬ 
tradictory thoughts; he is like a ship without a rud¬ 
der, tossed by the waves, driven hither and thither 
by currents and winds. One must have knowledge 
of the port, must know the goal, and then keep 
working to attain the desired end or purpose in life. 

While Will is an involuntary action in the life 
of man, yet the effect of such action can be aug¬ 
mented or retarded; one can co-operate with the 
Universal Will to feel that the whole power of life 
is working within him to will and to do; God and 
oneself are always in the majority. The will in us 
is ever seeking to give expression to all that we 
think, to all that we are. The mind of man, though 
unable to shut off the exercise of will, is able to give 
it direction, and when such direction is in accord 
with Universal law and order, man becomes truly 
creative, and his work a real expression of thought 
and will. Through the direction or misdirection of 


DESIRE AND WILL 65 

Will one must either be creating or destroying, build¬ 
ing up or tearing down. When the mind is in¬ 
fluenced by the unreal emotions of life, then the de¬ 
structive process is going on, disintegration is tak¬ 
ing place. Let the mind become fearful concerning 
anything, and at once creative thought and action 
are in a marked degree suspended. 

The person who knows what he wants to do, and 
sets himself diligently to the doing, will become the 
strong man; this holds good in every department of 
life. Opportunities do not come to us; we make op¬ 
portunities. The man who is not willing to lay 
hold and do the thing that he can do to-day, but 
who is waiting to have something greater come to 
him in the future, will find that the thing that he 
desires will continue to remain in the future as far 
out of his reach as it was in the beginning, while 
the person who does the small thing, and does it in 
the best possible way, is surely fitting himself to 
do still greater things. One should never be afraid 
of giving to one’s work more than one receives from 
it. Whatever we sow, we reap; the measure we 
mete is measured back to us again. The man who 
gives of himself sparingly, will receive sparingly: 
the man who puts himself in a thorough way, a 
large way into his work, will reap in abundance. 

Any one who cares to, may prove the truth of 


66 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


these assertions. Life is just what we make it, just 
what we bring to it. The man’s work can become 
a true expression of his life. We have everything 
necessary to the working out of every problem, and 
to the overcoming of every obstacle, but from first 
to last, every good and every perfect thing that 
comes to us in life, comes because, while a gift, we 
work for it, and we give some equivalent for what we 
receive. There must be a real reciprocity of giving 
and receiving; we do not get something for nothing. 
As we enrich our world, we become enriched; as we 
give our thought and our strength to the world, 
a newer and greater thought is constantly coming 
and our strength is ever being renewed. 

Let us make no mistake; the laws of God can never 
be annulled by man, and there is absolutely no way 
of escaping from their action; their action is always 
for good to those who are attuned to them. The 
individual has power within himself to make such 
adjustment to the laws of life that in all his receiv¬ 
ing only good flows into his life. As he uses that 
which he receives, there is a continuous influx; it is 
only through constant giving, that there is a con¬ 
stant receiving, but what we receive is in kind what 
we give. If people could only realize the truth of 
this, and shape their lives accordingly, health, hap¬ 
piness, and success in life would be seen to be the 


DESIRE AND WILL 


67 

natural outcome of a lawfully directed and con¬ 
trolled life. But people say it is so hard to change 
from the old to the new, and when they say it, they 
are only making it more difficult because of the say¬ 
ing of it. 

The world that is to be overcome, is not only the 
great world that lies external to man’s self, but 
rather the world of past consciousness, of what we 
have thought and felt, of what we have been and 
done in the past. The conscious mind is ever revert¬ 
ing to the things of the past; it lives them over and 
over again; it gives to them a greater power and 
authority than a past deserves. The past is what 
we have been and done, and should be left behind 
for the present, the new things we should be doing. 
Supposing that much of the past has been for good, 
or admitting that it has all worked together for 
good, that is no reason why we should revert to it, 
or be governed by it; only as we leave it behind, only 
as we press forward to those things which lie before, 
will the eternal newness of life be ours. 

The things that were good and true at one stage 
in the development of life, are no longer necessary 
or helpful to the present life; they have served their 
purpose, but some greater thing is to serve some 
new purpose. The present day, the living hour, 
should be the all-important time in life. One should 


68 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


never be content to rest on one’s laurels; the things 
that one has been, or the things that one has done 
are past, but the present is here, for a greater be¬ 
ing or a greater doing, and demand of the present is 
how to live each day and each hour, and through 
such living enrich the mind with knowledge for the 
doing of greater things than have ever been accom¬ 
plished in the past. 

Leave the past behind; the mark of the high 
calling is always before. Press forward, onward, 
upward. Desire to become all that your highest 
imagination can picture for you. Desire to do 
everything that you deem to be worthy of your 
doing. Know that there is an infinity of possibil¬ 
ities, and that every possibility that enters the mind, 
is there in order that it may be realized, and that 
the end of all realization is expression; for living 
ideals must become symbolized as outer signs of in¬ 
ner power on earth. 

Be sure that each desire that enters the mind is 
going to be of benefit to you when it is realized. Do 
not desire something that later will only leave you 
poorer because of your having it. Never desire 
anything, which, while enriching you, impoverishes 
some one else. No permanent gain can come to any 
one through some one else’s loss. 

Finally, strive for clearness and conciseness of 


DESIRE AND WILL 69 

mental vision. Learn to keep the mind centered on 
all you desire, have faith in the fulfillment of your 
desires, work in a persevering way for their ac¬ 
complishment; put the full force of will, mind and 
body into all the efforts you make to realize your 
desires, and know that in doing your part you have 
fulfilled all that was required of you, and rest as¬ 
sured that every desire of heart and mind will be¬ 
come fully realized; that you will be able to do what 
you will to do, and that you will be able to become 
all that you will to become, because you have brought 
mind and will into conformity to the Mind and Will 
that governs and directs the whole universe. 


* 






























PART II 





CHAPTER VII 


MENTAL, AND PHYSICAL POISE 

TV/T ANY people have accustomed themselves to 
■*“ "*■ thinking of mental poise as being one state, 
and physical health as something entirely different, 
yet if any one will devote time and thought to the 
careful investigation of the subject, he must become 
convinced that mental and physical health are one 
and the same, that the body is only an instrument, 
an organism through which soul and mind finds outer 
expression. Like the moon, it is a reflector, not the 
giver of light; it is a faithful reflector, in that every 
thought the mind can think is expressed accord¬ 
ing to the degree of intensity of feeling put into it. 
The body is what it is, because of all that we have 
felt and all that we have thought. It has no power 
to make or to unmake itself; but it has power to 
respond to one’s thoughts and feelings. The mind 
can make it whole and strong, or the mind can make 
it weak and diseased; the result is purely a question 
of mental poise or lack of it. How foolish it is, then, 
to separate body from mind, and proceed to the 
healing of the body without any thought of mind or 
73 


74 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

its action. What can any one accomplish by doing 
this? There may be a physical action coming from 
drugs taken into one’s system, and there may be 
temporary relief from suffering, but in what way is 
a drug going to heal a moral wrong? In what 
way is a drug going to overcome an emotional or a 
discordant mind? We only deceive ourselves when 
we look for anything in the nature of permanent 
physical health, expecting it to come through 
purely external ways and means. 

No one is asked to blindly accept the theory that 
the mind dominates the body for good or for ill. 
But every one who will take the time to prove the 
theory, must become eventually convinced of its 
truth, and the person who does this and then uses 
the knowledge acquired for the strengthening and 
the perfecting of his physical body will be more than 
amply repaid. If the bodies of people could have 
been made well and whole through physical remedies, 
surely by this time the so-called science of medicine 
should have overcome all kinds of physical diseases; 
but the fact is that diseases multiply as fast as new 
remedies multiply, and the science of drug-medica¬ 
tion to-day, is really no further advanced than it 
was in the dark ages. One may say that man lives 
longer than he formerly did, but he does it in spite of 
drugs, and not by their aid. The minds of men 


MENTAL AND PHYSICAL POISE 75 

have been expanding, have been growing into the new 
light and the new life, and with such growth there is 
the natural response in the body, and as this new 
light and the new life continue to grow, man’s body 
will keep pace with it. Mental poise means physical 
health. But what is mental poise? It is a state of 
equilibrium between inner and outer consciousness. 
Outer consciousness has to deal with things; inner 
consciousness has to do with forces; it is the balance 
between the two that must be maintained. Poise, 
then, is adjustment; every individual has the power 
within himself to adjust, not only to his outer en¬ 
vironment and to other people, but has the power 
to adjust to his own inner life; through knowledge 
and the right use of power he is able to establish 
harmonious adjustment. This means mental and 
physical health. It is purely a mental process, but 
it is followed by physical effects. If no results fol¬ 
lowed, one might well say that there was no ground 
for such belief, because theories that are incapable of 
being expressed are about the most useless things 
that one can encumber the mind with; yet, if one 
person after another derives physical health and 
strength through a certain course of mental action, 
then this of itself establishes a law of health and 
strength; one may deny it as much as he will, but in 
doing so, he is exposing only his own ignorance. 


76 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

Only one who has tested and proved is in a position 
either to deny or affirm; denial, therefore, coming 
from one who has had no experience in proving is 
not worthy of consideration, because such denial can 
only be the outcome of prejudice, the prejudging 
without knowing, but true knowledge is necessary 
to all righteous judgment. 

Physical health and strength can be acquired 
through mental effort, but, in acquiring anything, 
the law and order that lies back of its fulfillment 
must be observed, there is no haphazard, there is no 
chance or luck in the process of body-building, for 
everything responds to law and order. One should 
know this at the outset; that it is not mere wishing 
or thinking oneself strong, that makes one become 
so, but rather an intelligent co-operation with the 
laws of life. Whatever we get in this world we 
must work for, we must pay the price; therefore if 
one would start right, he must enlighten his mind, 
his mental or thought pictures should all be colored 
by what he wants to do, by what he wants to become. 
As a man thinks with true thought and feeling so he 
becomes; the outer takes form after the inner. A 
stream cannot rise higher than its source; the source 
cannot send forth sweet and bitter water; whatever 
the source is, whatever it partakes of, you must find 
the same thing in all its outer expression, for it 


MENTAL AND PHYSICAL POISE 77 

is the source that makes life what it is. If one wants 
mental poise one must go to the Source, one must 
become adjusted to it; one must draw from it. 

Life and love and light, these will illuminate the 
mind, these will cause one to think new thoughts; 
thoughts that are in conformity with the inner 
vision; thoughts that are alive; thoughts that are 
filled with loving-kindness; thoughts that are harmo¬ 
nious with the light of truth. The Source is open 
to all, but all do not find it. Fervent desire, un¬ 
tiring seeking will bring one to the Fountain-Head. 
The way is open, but only those who seek, find; 
through finding, one’s mentality becomes clarified; 
one learns to think concisely, avoids vain repetition 
of thoughts and words. Remember that all life is 
one, there is, however, a constant diversity; that of 
expression signifying, not only a constant becoming, 
but a constant renewing; a letting go of old things 
through laying hold on new. It is through doing 
this that one adds to his length of days; it is through 
doing this that a greater increase in physical health 
and strength shall come. Harmony is the key-note 
of existence; if one is in harmony with one’s inner 
consciousness of life, that is, if one has no personal 
sense of judgment and condemnation, then that har¬ 
mony will express itself in outwardly giving proof 
of the truth that the physical organism is ruled by 


78 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

the mind and spirit within; but if one allows his 
mind to become sick, or thinks and dwells on weak 
and discordant thoughts, then sickness, weakness and 
discord will be expressed on the physical body. We 
are the authors of all that we call ill, owing to the 
way that we have adjusted ourselves, or, rather 
might I say, failed to adjust ourselves to life and 
its laws. True adjustment comes only through in¬ 
dividual effort; it is not possible that one can bring 
it about for another; except in this sense, that one 
in mental treatment might impart to another the 
necessary knowledge to equip that other to overcome 
wrong ways of thinking, or false emotional feelings, 
but such equipment would count for nothing unless 
the personality were working to give expression to 
what he had acquired. It is like leading a horse to 
the water, but the horse has it in its power to drink 
or refuse to drink; so one may learn to know, with¬ 
out learning to use; but knowledge, in order to be of 
benefit to any one must be used, and the person who 
is in possession of knowledge without using it, only 
brings judgment and condemnation on his own head. 

The mind of man was never intended to be a store¬ 
house for knowledge, or for an accumulation of facts 
that were never to be put to use. Many people com¬ 
plain that they are deficient in memory; the defi¬ 
ciency exists because of failure on their part to make 


MENTAL AND PHYSICAL POISE 79 

use of the knowledge they already possess. If one 
is filling the mind with many things that can never 
be used, and there is no need to remember them, then 
the wrong habit established about some things will 
become a part of many things; so it would be found 
difficult to recall the things one wishes to remember. 
All knowledge should have some definite purpose in 
it, something to enrich the mind, something to be 
used; failing in this, it becomes a hindrance to 
growth rather than an aid. Men are responsible 
to a far greater degree for the things they know and 
fail to live up to, than if they knew but a little. To 
whom much is given, from him much is required. In 
one’s quest after knowledge, there should always be a 
definite object or purpose, that it may serve some 
needed end, that it should be no mere acquisition of 
knowledge without end or purpose. Let purpose 
enter into everything in life. One should acquire 
anything, whether it be material, mental or spiritual, 
only in order to use it. It is fatal to one’s growth 
to hoard up anything; only through the use of all 
one’s possessions can one understand their true value, 
and make oneself open for still greater possessions. 
The person who is using all the talents he has devel¬ 
oped is in the sure way of increasing them; constant 
growth comes through constant use of whatever we 
may be in possession of. No one can keep in a state 


8o WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


of mental or physical poise who is constantly receiv¬ 
ing and yet not using that which he receives. I have 
known many people eager for knowledge, but who 
never put to a real use the knowledge they had ac¬ 
quired, and the result has always been a restless and 
unbalanced life; a condition wherein there was neither 
mental poise nor physical health. 

Only through the use, then, of all that we possess 
can we hope to attain perfect equilibrium of mind 
and body. No matter how ardently we may desire 
health of mind and body, yet we must fulfill all the 
requirements necessary to the attaining of these 
ends. There is a way of using the mind whereby 
each thing that one does receives the necessary at¬ 
tention that causes it to be done in the best possible 
way. One can act with promptness and quickness, 
but in such action there should be no undue haste. 
One, too, should cultivate the imagination. The 
mind can always be working out new and better ways 
of doing things; there should be no such thing as 
finality in any of our doings. The greater intelli¬ 
gence should always mean the greater expression. 
The mind that is constantly being renewed should be 
as constantly reforming and renewing its actions, 
so that nothing in the nature of fixed habit, or the 
monotony of doing everything at a definite time, or 
in a definite way, should become an established state 


MENTAL AND PHYSICAL POISE 8li 

of mind. The person who daily receives new visions 
should be as regularly striving after new expres¬ 
sions ; there can be an eternal newness for one whose 
inner perception holds his mind in this attitude, for 
constant receiving depends on constant giving. 
Only to the degree that we are able to give or impart 
of what we have received, are we able to receive in 
still greater abundance. What we are becoming in 
life is always to a marked degree dependent on 
what we are doing. The promise is, that he “ who 
doeth the will, shall know of the doctrine,” that to 
him who uses what he has to use, will come greater 
facilities for knowing and for doing. Heart and 
mind must work together; feeling and thinking 
should be a joint action, entering into everything 
that one may do in life. Know that ideals 
formed in mind can be expressed if one will only 
work for their expression, and put the right spirit 
into his work. Strong positive thought and feeling, 
begets strong, forceful action, and the former is al¬ 
ways a necessary requisite to the latter. A healthy 
and sane mind must learn to free itself from false 
imaginations which hinder both mental and physical 
growth. True thought-imaging should concern it¬ 
self with living realities. Because of Omnipresence in 
life, there is life in abundance for all who desire the 
life more abundant; because energy is omnipotent 


82 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


one can draw all the energy necessary for the strong, 
true act; because Omniscience has only one 
Source, one may be constantly drawing knowledge 
and wisdom sufficient for every need from this unlim¬ 
ited Source. The whole thing is so simple that a 
child might grasp its significance. God is the 
Source; the supply is an unfailing one. All who 
will may approach and drink of the waters of life 
freely, and doing this, one leaves behind all negative, 
all false imaginary conditions of life; one enters a 
realm of sunshine—eternal day, wherein there is no 
night. The shadows are left behind. All one’s feel¬ 
ings become God-like; all one’s thoughts become im¬ 
ages or pictures of God’s creation. There is only 
one way—the strait and narrow way; and the strait 
and narrow way from first to last, is knowledge of 
God and His handiwork as being all there is that is 
real in the universe. Men and women who live with 
such knowledge have freed themselves from sin and 
disease, from pain and sorrow, from every unreal 
imagination that shuts out the light of the Omni¬ 
presence of God. Man is God’s representative on 
earth to establish His will, to make manifest His 
design, and therefore, those who receive of life en¬ 
ergy and intelligence, and are conscious of the Source 
from which they receive, must in turn impart to 
those who are less conscious than themselves. For 


MENTAL AND PHYSICAL POISE 83 

only in this way can the Fountain of life remain a 
spring of living water in the life. It is the empty¬ 
ing of oneself in the giving, in the imparting to 
others, which becomes the true preparation for be¬ 
ing filled again. “ Give to him that asketh thee, 
and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not 
thou away.” All our health and strength in life, 
all our love and faith and hope are hidden in God, 
and only as we seek are the hidden treasures re¬ 
vealed to us; and when we have found them, only as 
we use them to enrich the lives of others, do we enter 
into still greater riches. There is something won¬ 
derful, something so different in all this from what 
we felt and thought of life in the past. It seems too 
good to be true, yet its very goodness is the evidence 
of its truth. All that is asked of people is, that 
they put themselves in right relation for receiving, 
and in order to keep on receiving, to give of their 
riches to bless the lives of all who are ready to re¬ 
ceive from them; so that all humanity may be bene¬ 
fited, so that the greatest riches of life may be trans¬ 
mitted from the most highly developed to those less 
developed, and so to continue down to the elemental 
man; so that all may be blessed, and so that this 
vivifying and renewing power will extend to the 
whole body of humanity, giving light and life and 
health to all. 


84 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

Sometimes I have the thought that the most highly 
developed human being can never be saved so long as 
any one remains in his sins, and is subject to their 
effects, that the full and complete salvation of one 
means the full and complete salvation of all; and 
that he who loses his life in his efforts to bring sal¬ 
vation to others, finds his life in a larger and more 
complete way. We are, as Paul says “ members one 
of another,” “ there is neither Jew nor Greek, there 
is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor 
female ”; but we are all one in the Universal son- 
ship ; humanity as a whole is the only-begotten 
Son of the Father-Mother God; what Jesus the 
Christ represented in Himself, both as humanity 
and divinity, all of humanity must come to express, 
must come to His measure, to His fullness, to His 
stature; for in Jesus the Christ, we see the divine 
ideal unto which all must attain, and the second 
coming of Christ means the coming of the Universal 
Christ in the hearts and minds of all people. I think 
that each individual has something to do in helping 
to bring the dawn of that new day, something to do 
first of all in bringing his own will into harmony 
with Universal Will, something to do in learning to 
control the full force of his own life, thereby bringing 
about the God-consciousness of a power that is ever 
working within to will and to do; something to do 


MENTAL AND PHYSICAL POISE 85 

so that in the living of his life, he easts light upon 
the way of life and thus becomes a help to others. 

It is plainly shown by this that the quest for 
mental and physical health is far greater than any¬ 
thing we have been able to conceive of in the past; 
that its full and complete expression leads to a 
higher and more wonderful development than per¬ 
haps any we have contemplated hitherto; that it 
is no longer necessary for any one to wait for the 
consummation of such development until they have 
passed out of the body, but that it is waiting for 
all who will lay hold on and make it their own; that 
in the struggle effort is necessary, not a strained 
effort, but a persistent effort, for the kingdom of 
God is taken by violence. It is only through seek¬ 
ing that we find it; it is only through knocking that 
the door is opened; but the promise is for all who 
take this course. One may taste to-day of the 
joys of the kingdom of heaven, and may go on day 
after day, month after month, year after year, 
realizing to a still greater degree these joys that are 
never-ending, for the fullness of yesterday is sur¬ 
passed by the fullness of to-day. Life is ever on 
an ascending scale, progress is eternal and the way 
is always upward and onward. Nothing stands in the 
w r ay of our progress, but our own false imaginations. 
The imaginations we allow to enter the mind seem to 


86 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


separate us from God’s love and life; seem to sep¬ 
arate us from the rest of humanity, so that we stand 
alone, and our whole being becomes absorbed by 
these false imaginations, keeping the attention 
focused on the self to the exclusion of real knowl¬ 
edge and true understanding. Yes, the only ob¬ 
stacles in the way of life are those that we place 
there, and the vision becomes obscured because of 
purely personal, selfish desire. We must learn to 
cast down imaginations “ and every high thing that 
exalteth itself against a knowledge of God”; we 
must learn to prepare the way for the reception of 
the incoming Spirit. Our lives have, as it were, 
been committed into our own keeping. 

When we are one with Universal Life and Love, 
then there is a constant process of unfolding going 
on in life, and we are expressing life as it should be 
expressed by being joyous and happy in mind, and 
strong and whole in body. The way is open for all; 
no one is denied entrance, but only those who enter 
the way may know of its joys. 

To some this may seem a very large way, and 
that very great effort is required of the one who 
would enter it. Let me say this that it is only as we 
are willing to go to the heart of any question that 
we are fully able to understand it; that it is far 
better to start right even if one makes slow progress, 


MENTAL AND PHYSICAL POISE 87 

than it is to take a misdirected course, though for 
a time one might seemingly accomplish much; it is 
far better for us to see things as they are, than to 
deceive ourselves by thinking there is some other way 
equally good, if not better. We have tried the other 
way; we have sought health and happiness in the 
outer quest, but we have failed to find them, therefore 
it would seem the part of wisdom that we should try 
the new and the living way, the way that leads to 
God, the way that leads from the shadows and the 
unrealities to the eternal verities. We may find it 
difficult at first to accomplish all we would like; for 
in our subconscious minds we have the legacy of a 
past life, and we so often revert to it that at times 
we lose sight of the living present, but the con¬ 
scious mind is always best employed by not looking 
at the things that are past, but in focusing that at¬ 
tention on the things which lie before. Let the dead 
past bury its dead. It has served its end, its pur¬ 
pose and is no longer necessary to the mind that 
would become enlightened. Make life all that it 
should be. Live in the to-day, the yesterday is past, 
and the morrow is not yet. You have the eternal 
present. The things of the day should concern us, 
not the things of yesterday, or the things of to-mor¬ 
row. We have only to live one hour, one day at a 
time. Fill that hour, fill that day, with the develop- 


88 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


ment of new powers, with the vision of greater pos¬ 
sibilities. Live, put your whole soul and mind into 
to-day, and you have entered the way which leads to 
eternal life, to eternal happiness, the way which will 
bring to you everything that heart and mind can 
desire. 


CHAPTER VIII 


how: to acquire and retain health 

r ET us open this chapter with a little confidential 
* talk with the reader. There can be no question 
but that we all desire to make successes out of our 
lives, though of course, our varying viewpoints may 
differ as to what really constitutes success. When 
one has mental and physical equipment, a strong 
mind and a strong body, that puts one in a far 
better position to attain success than if the opposite 
of this were true. When the body is weak or dis¬ 
eased you are hampered in accomplishing all you 
Idesire to do. With a strong body you might suc¬ 
ceed in doing the things you wished in a much shorter 
space of time. Many people have been able to at¬ 
tain success whose bodies have been weak and dis¬ 
eased, but even the success thus obtained has been 
marred by failure to enjoy it in the way they might 
have done had their bodies been strong and whole. 
They attained success through strong, persistent ef¬ 
fort, in spite of their physical conditions, but such 
success might have been far more easily reached 
if they had been physically whole and strong. 


9 o WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

Through physical health we lay the foundation for 
happiness and success. I use the term “ happiness ” 
in relation to success advisedly, because real success 
should ever bring with it happiness. I do not con¬ 
sider a man truly successful who is unhappy. 

Everything we do in life, if it be done in the 
right way, should be conducive to happiness. I 
wish, therefore, to impress upon the mind of the 
reader the necessity for physical health, and in this 
chapter I will try and explain how it can be best 
attained or if one is in possession of it, how he can 
best continue to retain it. In the effort he is mak¬ 
ing to accomplish this something else will accrue to 
him which is even more important than physical 
health-mental poise, which means, the full control 
of one’s life, the full power to lead the lawful, or¬ 
derly life that it was intended in the divine Plan we 
should all live, and which we can all live. 

Just a word about the varying theories you will 
meet with all the way through this book. Theories, 
to be good and to be true, must be practical. One’s 
mind may be filled with theories that are never put 
into practice; such theories, instead of being a help, 
are more in the nature of a hindrance, because one 
cannot help but be worried or troubled by ideals 
they hold to in mind that never find expression. 
Our theories, therefore, are to be understood in order 


HOW TO ACQUIRE HEALTH 91 

to be lived; otherwise, one will get little good from 
them or from a study of this book. 

Let us now take up the subject of physical health. 
The physical organism of man is continually ex¬ 
pressing man’s varying states of mind and thought, 
so that physical health may be said to be absolutely 
dependent upon mental health, and therefore, to 
make the body strong and whole we must learn to 
go to the fountain head of health. 

We have the faculty of mind that images or pic¬ 
tures every thought we think. Each thought forms 
a little picture; many thoughts go to form larger 
pictures. Just as one paints a picture with dark 
and bright colors, producing light and shade, so 
our everyday thoughts go to form our pictures of 
life. When shade, or the dark colors predominate 
in our picture, then we are not using our bright 
colors to the degree we should; consequently our 
pictures are not really true to life. This imaging 
faculty is, without doubt, the greatest of all mental 
faculties, but like every faculty it can be used or it 
can be abused. On its right use is dependent mental 
and physical health; its abuse will bring mental 
weakness, physical disease. For every thought we 
think, for all the mental pictures we create in mind, 
take form and express themselves on one’s physical 
organism, so that the body becomes an expression of 


92 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

what we have thought, of what we have felt. Vary¬ 
ing kinds and degrees of feeling affect our thoughts, 
to brighten and give tone and color to them, or to 
darken and give gloom and depression to them. Re¬ 
member that we are the painters who paint all our 
own pictures of life; we make them what they are; 
we can be master painters if we will, but one becomes 
a master painter only through knowledge and the un¬ 
ceasing application of what he knows—knowledge of 
how best to use each faculty of mind; knowledge 
that goes back of every faculty of mind, wherein one 
becomes conscious of living the soul-life, and a use 
of all its powers that are to be found potentially in 
the life of every man that cometh into the world. 

Now let us see how we are going to use this im¬ 
aging faculty in a way to get from it only the real 
good of life. If any one thinks of everything as 
being a part of the great whole, that is, that every¬ 
thing is related to everything else, and that one part 
is as necessary to the whole as any other part, grad¬ 
ually there will come to the mind a sense of the unity 
of things, the oneness that prevails throughout 
God’s universe. The mind that gets this view of life 
perceives that because of this unity, because of this 
oneness, the something which is called evil has no 
reality; its existence is dependent upon one’s belief 
in it, its only power is that which one chooses to 


HOW TO ACQUIRE HEALTH 93 

give to it. Evil is the contradictory of good. Up 
to a certain stage in the development of the life of 
man it serves a purpose. Through comparison or 
contrast one learns to distinguish the real from the 
unreal, the whole from that which is partial and in¬ 
complete. Evil, at best, is only the background by 
which life’s realities are made manifest. When we 
perceive the truth of this, evil loses all its seeming 
power over us, and we can at any moment bring the 
light of the Central Life to dispel all the outer dark¬ 
ness which we call evil. “ Be ye not overcome of 
evil, but overcome evil with good.” When we be¬ 
lieve in, or give power to evil we find ourselves doing 
evil things; picturing in mind partial or imperfect 
things, so that our thought-pictures do not repre¬ 
sent things as they are, but only as they seem to us 
to be when the mind is filled with darkness, rather 
than light. But because the law of expression is 
true, all our pictures, whether we call them by the 
name of good or evil, must become expressed in the 
physical organism. Whatever then the mind dwells 
upon the body begins at once to express. Some-: 
times this expression affects us more rapidly and to a 
greater degree than at others; this can be said both 
as regards the true and the false, and the reason for 
it is that anything which moves us deeply produces 
either a true emotion—that is, an emotion such as 


94 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

love, joy, faith, hope, or some other emotion of 
a nature kindred to these—or a false emotion of 
hate, anger, jealousy, doubt, or any other un¬ 
real emotion similar to these. The greater the de¬ 
gree of either true or false emotion, the more ef¬ 
fectual and the more rapid will the expression be. 
If one wishes, then, to be physically whole, he must 
use his imaging faculty in such a way as to picture 
wholesome thought-pictures of life. Everything 
that his heart or his mind desires, let him form clear 
pictures, concise pictures, living pictures, and then 
know that they will all be expressed if he is truly 
feeling all that he is thinking. Let no thought of 
failure enter the mind, but have perfect faith that 
your desire will be fully and freely realized. Know 
that you can become all that you wish to become; 
know that you can do whatever your mind sets itself 
to do. Fill the mind with living ideals—by living 
ideals, I mean all the ideals that can become later on 
truly creative; all ideals that take real form in man’s 
work. One need not think he can picture one thing 
in mind and get the expression of something else 
in the body. Whatever we feel and whatever we 
think, that we become and it only means that we 
must go on feeling and thinking in the same way in 
order to retain the same condition. Control your 
thoughts, use them in such a way that every thought 


HOW TO ACQUIRE HEALTH 95 

you think will tend to strengthen you mentally, and 
whatever makes you strong in a mental way will also 
make you strong in a physical way. 

Remember that ideals exist for only one purpose 
and that is to be expressed. Not to be stored away 
with the belief that they are an asset of mind, because 
they become an asset only when they are put to a 
practical end or purpose, otherwise they are as value¬ 
less as gold that is being hoarded away by some one 
with no intention of ever using it. The value of 
everything consists in its use. The higher your 
ideals, the greater should be the desire after perfect 
expression. False ideals and false emotions poison 
first the mind and afterwards the body. The person 
who lives and believes in them must of a necessity be¬ 
come sick and diseased in both mind and body, and to 
overcome the effect of these poisons, he will go and 
take external poisons, thinking by so doing that it 
is possible for him to regain the health that he has 
lost. “ Be not deceived, God is not mocked. What¬ 
soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Re¬ 
member that it is just as easy, in fact, much easier 
to think true thoughts as regards oneself, and as 
regards one’s brother man, than it is to think false 
thoughts; that it is just as easy to entertain true 
emotions, as it is to entertain the false ones con¬ 
cerning yourself or any one else for that matter. It 


96 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

is simply a question of habit. Establish a right 
habit of thought and feeling, and you will find both 
health and happiness as the result of such a course. 
Sometimes a person holds two sets of ideals, one 
wherewith he judges and condemns other people for 
a lack of conformity to the ideals he has set up for 
them, and another set of ideals to regulate his own 
life by. The difficulty about this is that we cannot 
hold ideals which mete out judgment and condemna¬ 
tion to others, without holding them for ourselves, 
so that “ with what judgment we judge, we shall be 
judged.” Failure to live and to conform to all that 
one knows or believes to be true is that which judges, 
convicts, and condemns. Its judgment and con¬ 
demnation is first a mental state, a state of inhar¬ 
mony and unrest, but later it becomes a physical 
state of pain and disease. 

My greatest desire is to show that this imaging 
of mind can be used to bring health, happiness, and 
success, but in order that this may be accomplished, 
the faculty must be used in the true way. It must 
never be used to picture anything we fear, anything 
we dislike, and whenever there is any intimation of 
its being used to this end, one should replace the 
wrong thoughts, not by an effort to put them out of 
mind, and say we will not think them, but by the 
introduction of true thoughts, knowing that it is 


HOW TO ACQUIRE HEALTH 97 

truth that overcomes falsity, that it is good that 
overcomes evil, knowledge that overcomes ignorance, 
love that overcomes hate, faith that overcomes doubt; 
that the whole life is really a process of overcoming; 
that it is not fighting evil with evil, but overcoming 
it with good; that hate and fear never dispel hate 
and fear, but that perfect love casteth out all hate, 
all fear. Just seek for the true side of life, seek 
for everything that will beautify the mind. Learn 
to have only true emotions, acquire a true technique 
of right thinking. Everything that we receive in 
life comes to us because of desire and a willingness 
on our part to work for the realization of the de¬ 
sire. If there is no effort put forth, then in our 
receiving there is no joy; the things we work for, 
when we receive, we prize them. Anything worth 
having in life is worth working for. Set yourselves 
to work steadfastly for mental poise, for physical 
health, as you would set yourself to work for any 
material thing. Have faith that you are able to ac¬ 
complish what you have set out to do; never be 
doubtful or discouraged about the outcome. Do all 
that you have to do in the best possible way and 
success will surely crown your efforts. 

Ideals are formed in mind in order to be realized. 
Sometimes one will allow his ideals to far outstrip 
his performance. The closer one can keep in per- 


98 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

formance to his ideals, the more true satisfaction he 
will get from life. Perseverance is a factor not to 
be underestimated. It is not the working of a few 
hours of one’s day of life, but the constant per¬ 
severing effort that is going to give the desired re¬ 
sults. Sometimes people think that their burdens 
are too heavy to carry, and they want to lay them 
down and rest by the wayside, but it is in the con¬ 
stant doing that we grow strong. Our burdens 
are never so heavy but that if we learn to carry them 
in the right way, we shall be able to go on. The 
Master once said:—“ Take my yoke upon you, and 
learn of me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is 
light.” It is the attitude of mind that we hold to¬ 
wards the world that makes our burdens heavy or 
light. The yoke is not a hindrance or an encum¬ 
brance, but something wherewith one’s burdens are 
made lighter and easier to carry; and so one can 
study with great profit to oneself how the Master 
carried His burdens. Our work in life may become 
to us an inviting work, if we will only learn to do it 
in the right way; if we put into it heart and mind, we 
shall become so interested in what we are doing, that 
we shall get a real joy out of our work. Remember 
that one’s work is an expression of one’s life, and 
that the tree is judged by its fruits, and the tree 
that bears no fruit or poor fruit, is only an encum- 


HOW TO ACQUIRE HEALTH 99 

berer of the ground. One should, therefore, seek 
to give full and free expression in an outer way to 
their inner thoughts and ideals. The law of life 
is to express all; suppression interferes with the true 
action of that law. People may be in possession of 
beautiful ideals, but if they are keeping those ideals 
to themselves, and not expressing them or giving 
them to the world, they are surely cutting off their 
source of supply, retarding their own growth and 
development. One should know that, in giving ex¬ 
pression to the ideal of to-day, a greater ideal will 
present itself on the morrow requiring still greater 
expression; this is the only way to grow into a 
symmetrical life, it is the lawful, the orderly way, 
it is the way that will bring one lasting happiness 
and sure success. 

Let each one learn to be himself, to express his 
own thoughts and his own ideals. Each person has 
something to give to the world that is a little dif¬ 
ferent from what any one else has for it; so it is 
necessary both for the person and the world, that 
one should live his own life, expressing it in his own 
way, that he should never be a copy or an imitation 
of any one else. Every faculty of mind of which 
one is in possession, if used day by day to its full 
capacity, will produce an ever-increasing strength 
and growth. 



ioo WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


The only way to live a thoroughly poised life is 
through thinking and acting for oneself; in other 
words, being thoroughly true to the self by ex¬ 
pressing one’s own thoughts and doing with one’s 
might what his hands find to do. 



CHAPTER IX 


HARMONIC VIBRATION 

1 11HE science of to-day tells us the rate of vibra- 
tion at which the human ear begins to hear 
sound, and the rate of vibration when the ear ceases 
to hear, the rate of vibration required to effect the 
optic nerve in order to produce the first color red, 
and the rate of vibration that produces the last 
color violet. It tells us much concerning heat and 
electric vibration; but there is one great field of vi¬ 
bration about which science knows almost nothing. 
That does not mean, however, that the time will not 
come when much more than is known at the present 
shall be disclosed. I refer to that field of vibration 
which relates to human life. 

The whole great universe is in a state of eternal 
vibration; forms come out of the invisible because of 
this vibration and forms return to the invisible be¬ 
cause of vibration. Creation and destruction seem 
to go hand in hand. 

When an individual is harmonious, when he is at¬ 
tuned to inner life and outer environment, there is a 
vibration in mind and body that establishes perfect 
101 



102 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT 1 ? 


physical health; again, when through fear, discord 
and unrest, another order of vibration is set up, then 
this works for destruction, for disease and disintegra¬ 
tion, and the final death of the body. 

We should know, in so far as it is possible for us 
to know at present, not only the law, but the action 
of the law of vibration as it applies to human life. 
Of course a law is established only through its ac¬ 
tion, through what it expresses, and we can only 
know in this way; but while we may know, very 
often to a degree, concerning the law of life and its 
vibration, we view such knowledge only in a partial 
way; the full force of it does not enter our minds; 
our knowledge at best is not practical, only theo¬ 
retical, and from it we derive but little. 

All knowledge should be possessed of some prac¬ 
tical value. If there is no practical good to flow 
from one’s knowing, then all such knowing is useless 
in the individual life. Of what benefit is it for any 
one to know concerning the law of vibration unless 
some good be brought through such knowledge ? 
No, the whole effort of man to unravel the secrets of 
the universe should be in order to profit through the 
knowledge he acquires. All knowledge should serve 
some purpose. It is far more important to indi¬ 
vidual life and happiness that one should know some¬ 
thing of the vibratory life of his own being than that 


HARMONIC VIBRATION 


103 

he should entertain innumerable theories concerning 
the law of vibration, wherein there is but little in¬ 
fluence or real benefit to his own life. 

The trend of the world to-day is to seek knowledge 
and understanding, in order to attain some practical 
good through so doing. It is not sufficient that one 
should make the mind a store-house of facts, but 
rather that one should be able to apply the knowledge 
he is able to acquire. When one knows that he can 
use his own powers to establish a certain order of vi¬ 
bration of mind and body that will result in perfect 
health and strength, then if he fails to do so, he can¬ 
not lay the responsibility for his state of ill-health 
on anything or any one else. The individual must 
assume the responsibility for his whole life, for it has 
been committed into his own care. One might just 
as well face the situation, and come to understand 
things aright, first as last. Each individual has to 
live life, live it from Alpha to Omega, live it for him¬ 
self, because no one else can live life for him; no one 
else can work out his problems, no one else can do his 
work. Each person works out his own salvation. 

Some one may retort by saying that there are a 
great many idle people in the world, for whom other 
people are working; that may be, but sometime and 
somehow, and somewhere, each man must work out 
his own salvation, must work it out, because no one 


104 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? * 

else can do it for him. One may evade the responsi¬ 
bilities of life for a season, and later find that by so 
doing, he has only added to them. Realizing the 
truth of this, how much better it will be to see things 
as they are and through clear seeing, set in motion 
causes that will bring about the desired effects. We 
can do this now if we will to do it; we must do it 
later whether we will to in a personal way or no, 
because there is something in man’s inmost life that is 
ever pushing for recognition, insisting on it, it will 
not be denied. The whole effort of human life is 
towards expression—an inner Plan that must be ex¬ 
pressed, and if one would be wise, he will take knowl¬ 
edge of this, and act accordingly. 

Let us say right here, that all vibration in the 
life of man has its starting point in the central part 
of man’s being—the soul-side of one’s life, that part 
which is in closest relation to the great Over-Soul. 

Do not infer from what I have just written that 
I mean that the soul is only a part; the soul is the 
whole man. Mind, sense, body, are all the develop¬ 
ment or degrees of man’s soul-life; but there is an 
inner center, and there is an outer expression, and 
terms are necessary to designate different degrees 
or conditions between the inner and outer life. 

Perhaps at one time or another, we have all had 
the experience of some great soul-impulse, such as 


HARMONIC VIBRATION 105 

joy, love, or hope illuminating all our faculties of 
mind, and renewing all our physical senses, so that 
the whole being was in a state of exhilaration, that 
one, instead of finding it tiresome to walk, seemed 
almost to fly. Doubtless at one time or another all 
people experience to a greater or less degree, the 
conditions just referred to. Some cause has aided 
in calling out potential life or energy, so that it has 
effected both inner and outer life, but the effect is 
only a temporary one, and there soon returns the 
habitual feeling, and one, perhaps, has only the mem¬ 
ory left of what seems to be almost as illusive as a 
dream. Sometime the dream will become abiding. 

Can that which seems temporary become perma¬ 
nent? The permanency will depend altogether on 
one’s powers of awakening soul-consciousness. 
Within the depths of every soul there is a conscious¬ 
ness that far exceeds any individual consciousness we 
have ever known anything about. It is that con¬ 
sciousness which realizes its oneness with the great 
Universal, the cosmic Consciousness. Just as soon 
as one is able to enter into this consciousness, a new 
state of vibration is set up in the life. This vibra¬ 
tion has its beginning in the soul, but extends to 
both mind and body, renewing and strengthening 
both, giving new power to one’s mind, and greater 
health to one’s body. The quickened vibration may 


io6 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


be maintained by ever turning to the true Source of 
all vibration; the real vibration always proceeds 
from and is in harmony with the Source of all Life 
and Love. What we feel makes us what we are. 

While there is a direct action on the physical at 
the solar plexus, no one should ever be deceived by 
the thought that this physical action is other than 
an effect. The real awakening of the solar plexus 
is always the result of soul action. Joy, faith, and 
love will ever make the solar plexus vibrate anew, 
but the solar plexus cannot set up vibration of 
itself. The mind must look within for the renewing 
power, not that looking within has to do with one’s 
sub-conscious mind, that has to do with what one 
has thought and done and been in the past, but 
rather, back of all sub-consciousness, where one 
touches all that is most vital and most real of life. 

Introspection, which has solely to do with one’s 
thought-life will never bring light, because the light 
of life is not to be found in anything that we have 
thought or done, but the light of life is in the feeling 
of the presence of God, ever working within to will 
and to do. How then can we cultivate or how can 
we comprehend what soul-consciousness means? The 
desire to know may be the first step, but there are 
many steps following; every kind, generous thought 
held towards any one else is a step in the right di- 


HARMONIC VIBRATION 


107 

rection; every loving word or helpful suggestion is 
another; every good deed which makes life easier 
and happier for some one else to live, is an aid to the 
calling into outer existence of the cosmic conscious¬ 
ness. All that serves to establish a better under¬ 
standing, a keener knowledge, a more sympathetic 
appreciation of other people’s feelings and needs, is 
also helping to establish that oneness between the in¬ 
dividual and his fellow-man that is so absolutely es¬ 
sential to all true living. 

One should never forget for a minute that it is 
through love that all oneness is realized. Love be¬ 
gets understanding. Love, because it is the greatest 
power in the universe, carries within itself the seed 
of everything else. Whatever we love we become one 
with; through loving we understand, we know. Love 
being the supreme force, when we enter its conscious¬ 
ness or when we feel it moving within our conscious¬ 
ness, everything becomes quickened and renewed, a 
new rate of vibration is established, vibration that 
is not momentary or even temporary, but a vibration 
that becomes eternal. To be in the spirit of love 
is to know God, and to know God is eternal life. To 
know God is to vibrate to the Divine impulse, where 
the vibration of life becomes etheric, that is, vibra¬ 
tion without beginning or ending. 

The Bible speaks of Melchizedek, the High Priest 


io8 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


of God, who belonged to an Order which was without 
beginning or ending of days; this is the Order to 
which Jesus the Christ belonged, an Order that had 
power to lay down or take up, an Order whose habi¬ 
tation is eternal in the heavens. 

There is a pathway extending all the way from 
the first Adam to the Christ, whereby the necessary 
preparation for a realization of eternal life is at¬ 
tained. All people are in different stages of this 
pathway. All have the same goal to reach. Some 
are consciously anticipating the end of the journey; 
others do not even know that they have entered the 
pathway, their minds not being yet illumined by the 
Light which is to enlighten every man that cometh 
into the world. But all are children of the one 
Father; in the end all must realize their eternal son- 
ship. At first, in the pathway of life, the power 
necessary to the life seems to be derived from 
the outer world, and everything essential to the life 
of man is believed to come from there; and yet 
at each stage in his life, the real force of life comes 
from within, is a manifestation of the soul. 

One’s thought and feeling determines the rate of 
vibration, and the rate of vibration determines 
many other things, such as the way we are related 
to others, our own mental and physical health, our 
happiness and peace of mind. Remember, however, 


HARMONIC VIBRATION 109 

that the vibration is established through what we 
feel and what we think, and if it does not relate us 
harmoniously to life and its environment, that we 
have the power within us of establishing a new rate 
of vibration that will bring true adjustment. 

Love and wisdom must be co-joined. Love pro¬ 
duces the magnetic vibration, wisdom the electric, 
but the co-joining makes vibration neither electric 
nor magnetic, because the two unite in the one, 
producing the perfect equilibrium between the inner 
and the outer life. Love has to do with what one 
feels; wisdom has to do with what one thinks; 
thought and feeling must become one in action be¬ 
fore a perfect state of vibration can be attained. 

When I use the term “a perfect state” I do not 
for one minute refer to any ultimate state, but 
really that plane on which a person vibrates in a 
thoroughly harmonious way to a particular octave 
of being, attuned or adjusted to life. 

Let it be known that when one acquires a state of 
perfect harmony on any octave of being, that that is 
but a forerunner of a new octave, wherein not only 
that which was true and beautiful in the old is re¬ 
tained, but besides such retention everything is re¬ 
doubled on the new octave of being. 

People must learn to respond to every note of an 
octave before they can pass to a higher state of be- 


no WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT*? 


ing. Each particular note has its own rate of vibra¬ 
tion ; each note stands as having a definite rate of vi¬ 
bration of its own, but only as that rate of vibration 
unites with the vibration of other notes, can we have 
harmony or music. So in the life of man, it is not 
some one quality or faculty developed, but qualities 
or faculties all taking their place and all being used 
to produce the perfect music of life. The thor¬ 
oughly rounded out, and highly developed person is 
the one whose soul, mind and body are all vibrating 
in unison; where every attribute of soul, every fac¬ 
ulty of mind, and every organ of sense is being used 
to its full capacity. No matter on what plane we 
live, every note of the octave must be sounded, but 
sounded in such a way as to produce harmony and 
not discord. The harmony is dependent on the right 
adjustment of one note to another. The skilled mu¬ 
sician, who is in possession of knowledge, and knows 
how to apply it, is going to produce entrancing 
music, harmonious, rhythmic vibration which dis¬ 
closes itself in beauty of soul, and technique of form. 
But let no one be deceived, the technique is only an 
embodiment; it is last, and not first as so many sup¬ 
pose; the outer manifestation is only a symbol, is 
only a form, and back of every symbol and every 
form must be the ideal, and back of the ideal is the 
everlasting, the eternal Spirit from which proceeds 


HARMONIC VIBRATION 


m 


every living ideal, yet the ideal in turn must become 
expressed in form, an outer symbol of an inner truth. 

Vibration has its beginning in God, in Spirit, in 
Love, and works out from the Spirit within to all 
nature without, so that all nature is the outer reve¬ 
lation of the inner Spirit. Man works as God works, 
and as everything else in the universe works, from 
heart to expression, from center to circumference. 
True vibration must begin at the heart, the very 
center of life. When I use the term heart I have no 
physical conception, I mean only that which the 
heart symbolizes: the love, the life. Man can ever 
renew his outer life through renewing his mind by 
the quickening vibration that comes from the Spirit. 
As heat, electricity, light, color, are all expressions 
of vibration in the outer world, so the soul of man 
can become so consciously related to the Universal 
Spirit that he may produce the magnetic and electric, 
and the light and the life-giving currents at will, or 
better, might I say, can he bring himself into a con¬ 
scious relationship with Universal Love and Will, so 
that all the universal forces will produce an action 
of soul and mind to be in turn transmitted to the 
body. Hence the Spirit within us bears witness to 
our spirit that we are the children of God, that we 
are joint-heirs with Christ; there can be no heirship 
where there is nothing to inherit; we are joint-heirs 


112 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


in that we inherit all things; if we are the inheritors 
of all things, then we must be in possession of that 
Spirit which is the cause of all things. The very 
likeness of the Godhead must dwell in us, and 
through the great law of spiritual vibration, this 
likeness must take form and be expressed in as eter¬ 
nal a way as Spirit is eternal. As an heir of God, 
and a joint-heir of Christ, a man must build for him¬ 
self a habitation that is eternal in the heavens, his 
body must become truly representative of soul and 
spirit and as eternal as both. 

When man has freed himself from his false beliefs 
in sin and death, he will become fully conscious of 
his own immortality; if he had attained to such full 
consciousness now, his body would not be subject to 
disease and death. Out of the potential love and 
wisdom of his inner life, his mind is beginning to 
form a new consciousness of the life that is eternal, 
in the love that taketh no account of evil; he is dis¬ 
covering the new heaven within, and is trying to 
manifest it without; the old order is passing, a new 
order is at hand. He that hath eyes to see, may 
see the Son of Righteousness descending with heal¬ 
ing on His wings; he that hath ears to hear may 
listen to the still, small Voice, that is even now pro¬ 
claiming the way of the Lord, and the enlightened 


HARMONIC VIBRATION 113 

soul shall lay hold on the tree of Life and eat of its 
fruit, and live for ever, and righteousness shall cover 
the face of the earth as the waters cover the face of 
the great deep. 


CHAPTER X 


MAGNETIC ATTRACTION 

\ \ THAT is it that attracts us to some people and 
* * causes us to be repelled by others? Why do 
some people attract to themselves apparently only 
the pleasantest side of life, while other people have 
as constantly to deal with the disagreeable? Why 
are some people subject to all kinds of contagious 
diseases, while others seem to be almost entirely free 
from them,? These are only a few of the many 
questions that could be asked along similar lines. 
If we are living in a universe wherein law and order 
reign supreme, then there must be some positive way 
of answering such questions. Effects do not exist 
regardless of causes; there must be a tangible, rea¬ 
sonable explanation of everything that takes place 
in man’s life; especially must this be so if man, like 
everything else in the universe, is amenable to the 
laws which govern it. No one can think it a uni¬ 
verse partially governed by law and partially in a 
state of chaos. No, the law which governs the part, 
must govern the whole, and man is no more exempt 
from its action than anything else, because nothing 
114 


MAGNETIC ATTRACTION 115 

can take place in his life that is unaccountable. 
Every effect is explainable through knowledge of 
the cause which lies back of it. If we cannot give 
reasons for all the phenomena that take place in 
the life of man, it does not follow that there are no 
reasons to give, but rather that we have not fa¬ 
miliarized ourselves with law and its action upon our 
own lives. When you hear people talk of luck or of 
chance, or of things happening, they are giving ex¬ 
pression only to their ignorance concerning the law 
in its action on human life. The laws of the In¬ 
finite, when one has knowledge of them, and seeks to 
shape his life by them, bring to man only that which 
is for his highest, his best good. If they seem at 
times to do otherwise, it is only because in some 
way, there has been failure to effect a right adjust¬ 
ment to them, and the seeming ill is but a temporary 
condition to bring enlightment to the man who is 
not attuned in the true way to life and its laws. If 
man will not be taught knowledge and conformity 
in one way, then he is shown the necessity for both 
in another way. Everything is working together 
for his good, but he can choose for himself a har¬ 
monious way, or he can refuse to take such a course, 
and through such refusal bring about discord and 
unrest in his mental life, and pain and disease in his 
physical life; but there is no chance or luck in this, 


116 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT 1 


whatever the condition may be it has been brought 
about through adjustment or lack of adjustment; 
through knowledge, or lack of knowledge; through 
conformity, or lack of conformity; all causes origi¬ 
nating in his own mind. The power has been given 
unto him to shape his life in accordance with the di¬ 
vine plan, the thoroughly harmonious, true way. If 
he refuses to do this then the sorrow and pain from 
which he suffers is not to be considered as punish¬ 
ment for disobedience, but rather as a reminder that 
he is not attuned, that he must do the tuning of his 
own life; that harmony is the key-note of his being, 
and he must study the harmonies of life just 
as much as a composer or a musician would study 
the harmonies of music; he must study them too, 
not as mere theories concerning his life, but rather 
as theories demanding practical application on his 
part. In this way only can he prove these truths. 

We might compare humanity to all the different 
notes in music. We know that each note is neces¬ 
sary, but we know also that each note has a definite 
relationship to all the other notes, and that if this 
relationship is violated, discord is the result, not 
that any note is discordant in and of itself, but it 
is the right or the wrong relationship that it bears 
to the other notes. The sounding of one note does 
not produce a discord, neither does it produce a har- 


MAGNETIC ATTRACTION 


117 

mony. It is the action of the one in its relation to 
others that gives harmony, or the reverse. Each 
note has its place in the octave; each note can take 
its place in a higher octave; so each person has his 
place in the octave of life, but he cannot take the 
place of any other person; he can take his own place 
in a higher octave of being, if he wills so to do; in 
doing this, he does not lose anything which belonged 
to him on a lower octave, but only adds to what he 
has acquired, just as any one note in music redoubles 
its vibration in the octave just above. 

The golden harp that we have been told people 
are to play in the New Jerusalem, may be something 
more than a dream; it may symbolize the music that 
is unexpressed, or only to a small degree expressed 
in life at the present time; that each life is a part of 
the grand symphonic whole; and that in the future, 
each shall play that part in the celestial orchestra 
that one is best fitted to play. There is music in 
everything; music in the upward trend of the sap, 
after the long winter has passed, as it goes to the 
topmost branch to nourish it, causing a new vibra¬ 
tion, a new thrill of life; there is music in the growing 
grass, in the opening flower. It is something more 
than figurative when we are told that the leaves clap 
their hands and are glad. Man is the very epitome 
of all the music to be found in nature, but he has 


n8 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


not realized it; he has only partially discovered it; 
he is not fully aware that every musical instrument 
created by his own mind and hands is summed up in 
his own physical organism; he is not yet conscious 
that the Spirit within him can use this wonderful 
orchestra to produce the most perfect harmonies in 
life, to produce more wonderful music than the ear 
has yet listened to, for the ear is not yet attuned 
to the higher harmonies of music. 

Occasionally we find that a note sounded on one 
instrument will produce a corresponding vibration of 
a note in some other instrument. Whatever we see 
taking place in a small way in man’s outer world is 
taking place in a larger way in man’s inner world. 
There are people who are so closely attuned to each 
other that their very hearts beat in unison; that 
there is an instantaneous response of thought with 
thought, feeling with feeling. Sometime it will be 
known that all nature, that all life is vibrating to the 
pulsations of infinite harmonies; that the attunement 
is not merely that of two or even a few individuals; 
that these only help to form a part of the great 
octave of which every note is necessary from the 
lowest to the highest, and upon which the great 
Universal Spirit breathes, producing harmonies far 
beyond the range of our present hearing. To each 
person it is given to fit himself, to attune his own 


MAGNETIC ATTRACTION 119 

life to the universal harmonies of life. Through 

any given quality that he is consciously in possession 

of, he can attune himself to the same quality in the 

lives of others; he can add to the volume of life in 

others, he can draw from others a greater volume to 

add to his own life; he has within himself a tuning 

fork, wherewith he can test and find whether he is 
■» 

in harmony, in key with others; he has also a magnet 
within his own life, that is attracting to him from 
out the unseen, whatever he is attuned to; whatever 
he is giving in life, he is receiving in kind from life, 
his every thought and feeling, producing as it does, 
a vibration in his own life goes out and touches all 
kindred vibrations in the lives of others. If his vi¬ 
bration is inharmonious, then he vibrates to discords, 
and these mental inharmonies and discords set up 
similar conditions in the body, and a disintegration 
of the physical begins. If there is going out from 
him harmony of thought and feeling, there comes 
back to him the same response from all others that 
he has become attuned to. 

I wrote in only a partial way when I said each 
person represented a definite note in the grand oc¬ 
tave of humanity. Let me say in a more complete 
way that each person represents the whole octave 
of notes, and that those notes can be continually 
transferred from lower to higher octaves. It may 


120 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


be that one has consciously discovered only one note 
of his being, but if he is using that in a harmonious 
way in its relation to other notes, then he is fitting, 
or preparing himself for the development of a new 
note; but it is only when he has unfolded to 
every note of his being, that he becomes con¬ 
sciously attuned to all people. There may be some 
one dominant note that gives to him individuality, an 
individuality that is not possessed by any one else, 
“for one star differeth from another in glory”; 
each thing and each person becomes perfect in its 
own or his own particular way. There is oneness of 
life and intelligence, but there is always diversity 
in expression. No two people can ever express ex¬ 
actly alike; so each has something to give to all; 
something differing in degree, but not in kind; and 
each has something to receive from all, in order that 
he may give back again in a new and living way. 
If we are adjusted to our fellow-man in the right 
way, we will find that we can receive something from 
practically everyone we are brought in contact. 
But at the same time, because of such receiving, we 
are in a far better position to give out of the fullness 
of that which we have received. We only receive, in 
order that we may give; there is a ceaseless ebb and 
flow, a constant giving and receiving, and when we 
come to understand aright the action of this law, we 


MAGNETIC ATTRACTION 121 


will know that it makes for the inner harmonies of 
life, and the outer attunement to our fellow-men. 
In the highest sense we become truly helpful when we 
help others to help themselves. Let no one think 
that he can reap that which he has not sown. The 
quality of what we receive corresponds exactly with 
the quality of what we give. 

In view of this, the questions asked in the begin¬ 
ning of this chapter are surely answered. The 
state of consciousness we are in at any given time 
serves to relate us to such consciousness. Weak¬ 
ness of thought or feeling relates us to the same 
weakness in others; doubt and fear attract to us 
the doubts and fears of others; this unfortunate 
state, dwelt upon, brings greater misfortune and 
greater loss. All must come, sooner or later, to see 
that their own lives take form after their own 
thoughts and feelings; that they must assume the 
full responsibility for what they are, or what they 
desire to become. The whole question is one of 
right attunement to one’s inner and outer life. We 
attract to us what we are and what we give; and 
it is perfectly useless for any one to find fault with 
circumstances or environment, and claim that the 
present state is the result of one or both. We are 
what we are because of what we have felt and 
thought and done; we can make ourselves what we 


122 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


desire to be only through feeling and thinking and 
doing all that we desire to become; we shall attract 
to us, out of the unseen, whatever we are giving to 
it; the laws of life do not give us something for 
nothing; for everything we receive, we must pay the 
price, and the price is nearly always in the same 
kind. We pay the price first; the receiving is later; 
it is not cash on delivery, but cash before delivery. 
We may be dissatisfied with this, but dissatisfaction 
counts for nothing; it is not as though one person 
were treated in one way, and another person were 
treated in another way, but the laws of life treat 
all alike; they have no respect for personality; the 
so-called good man who violates them is as amenable 
to their action as is the so-called bad man. It is 
with what measure we mete that it is measured back 
to us again. Our lives are what we make them, 
not but what circumstances and environment and 
our fellow-men have their effect upon us either for 
good or for ill, because they do; but it depends al¬ 
together on the relationship that we have established 
to all these things. In life, everything, and every 
person, is acting to some degree on everything else 
and every other person. Upon the right or upon 
the wrong action; that is, upon the lawful or the 
unlawful action, is dependent every effect. Each 
person sets in motion daily, hourly, causes from 


MAGNETIC ATTRACTION 123 

which later he reaps effects. The causes are of his 
own making, the effects are also of his own reaping, 
although he is not always able to see them in that 
light. Man has free-will when his mind is attuned 
to the universal Will, but there is no free-will when 
the mind of man is in opposition; he is in bondage 
to his partial thoughts and emotional feelings; he 
can free himself only by bringing his life into har¬ 
mony with universal Law and Order. If he is at 
peace with himself, he is at peace with all men; if 
he is attuned to his own heart and mind, he is at¬ 
tuned to God and man, so that it lies within the pos¬ 
sibility of all who desire to shape their own lives that 
only the highest good shall come to them; it lies 
within the power of all who have become conscious 
of an inner knowledge, an inner life; and to con¬ 
sciously give a full and a free expression of it in 
an outer way should be the end and object of life. 
All things are possible to him who believes, to him 
who knows; as we know in part, we are able to ful¬ 
fill in part; with the greater knowledge and the 
greater faith must come the greater fulfillment. I 
mean by fulfillment that through faith and knowl¬ 
edge we are able to accomplish in outer expression 
that which we first idealized in mind. Knowledge 
and faith should go hand in hand. Faith is the un¬ 
seen substance out of which all things are made. 


124 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

If we would use this substance in everything we un¬ 
dertake, success would crown our efforts. Doubt 
saps one’s vitality. Faith is always constructive; 
doubt is destructive. Day by day, increasing in 
knowledge and developing greater faith, our lives 
become enriched, and the wonderful things we dream 
of to-day may become the glorious realities of to¬ 
morrow; but in order for them to become so, we 
must be living the dreams of yesterday to-day; vi¬ 
sion first, but realization must be all that the vision 
contains; we know only in order to do, and through 
the doing, a still greater vision is evolved. Let us 
remember just this, that we can have what we want 
in this world by feeling, by giving, because these 
form the living magnet which attracts to us in 
greater abundance everything we feel, everything 
we think, everything we desire. 

Never allow the mind to dwell upon anything that 
you do not want to see expressed; do not think for 
a single minute that you can think ill of any one 
without laying the foundation for the same thing to 
take place in your own lives. Whatever we feel, 
whatever we think for another, we feel and think 
for ourselves; in fact, it becomes a part of ourselves, 
and not only do we have it in our own nature, but 
we attract it to us from the nature of others. Why 
should we stand in the light of our own progress; 


MAGNETIC ATTRACTION 125 

of what possible profit can it be to any one to feel, 
or think, or do an evil thing, only to have the same 
thing come back to him with redoubled power? 

I have said elsewhere that we cannot think one 
thing, and express another; that we can, and we do 
express what we feel and think; we can determine 
for ourselves that which we feel, and that which we 
think, but having thought and felt, we must of a 
necessity give expression. Causes must produce ef¬ 
fects; there is no way to avoid the effects of our 
own thoughts and feelings save by choosing the 
thoughts we think, and by being animated by the 
truest feelings. Remember that anger begets an¬ 
ger ; that hate begets hate; that pride begets pride; 
that we continually draw from people that which 
we are giving to people; that love begets love; that 
kindness begets kindness; that good-will begets 
good-will; that if one dwells in true, positive, uplift¬ 
ing thought and feeling, then one can never express 
other than what he feels and thinks. We are told 
that God is in all, through all, and above all, and 
that He is working within us to will and to do; if 
we seek for God in every person we shall find God 
everywhere. Whatever we seek for in life, if heart 
and mind is given to the seeking, we shall surely 
find; whatever we desire for ourselves, we should de¬ 
sire equally for others. Life can become just as 


126 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


great, and just as beautiful, as we choose to make it, 
or we can allow our lives to be so filled with cloud 
that the sunshine, the joy of living, is shut out. 
One can reach beyond the clouds if he will; one can 
leave the shadows of life behind, but only by feeling 
love and peace in his own life, only by shower¬ 
ing on others that which he desires for himself; in 
giving in part one receives in part; in giving all one 
receives all. This should not be difficult of compre¬ 
hension ; he who runs may read. The way is a 
strait and narrow one, but all who will to enter it 
may find it. The reward is unto every man, ac¬ 
cording to his work. Let no one be deceived; real 
possessions are of the mind and soul; if one is pos¬ 
sessed of the real riches of life, it is because he has 
given of his real riches to others; if he is storing 
up riches in heaven, it is because his heaven is not 
one that is exclusively for himself, but one that is 
being prepared for everyone that cometh into the 
world; the good of the one is bound up in the good 
of the all, and the all is essential to the one, and the 
one essential to all. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE 

f | THROUGH an intelligent use of all the powers 
man is endowed with must lie the true way to 
success in life. There is such a thing as the mind 
centering on the accomplishment of some one par¬ 
ticular object and making a success in so far as that 
object may go, but one cannot conceive of real suc¬ 
cess that is confined to only one end or purpose. 
A man may be a genius and do one thing in a re¬ 
markable way, but if he is inefficient in practically 
every other way, as so often happens with a genius, 
he may give to others through his gift a great deal 
of pleasure, but his own world of thought and ao 
tion becomes restricted to the field of his own ac¬ 
complishments or similar accomplishments on the 
part of others. This is not a rounded out, fully de¬ 
veloped life. Such a person comes in touch with 
humanity only in one, instead of in many ways; he 
is unable to appreciate the values that attach to so 
many things outside of his own sphere of action. 
It would seem to me that the really successful man 
is one who is able to take a large view of life; to 
127 


128 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


come in touch with it, not from any one point of 
view alone but from many; to be able to enter into 
all its great problems through the knowledge he has 
acquired by coming in contact with all the varying 
phases of life. In fact, he should be able to enter 
into the joys of the world in which he lives and, to 
some degree at least, into its sorrows in order that 
he may be better able to understand, and be better 
able to bring light to those who are in darkness, to 
bring joy to those who are in sorrow and thus add 
something to the real harmonies of life. A man, to 
be thoroughly developed, must be consciously in 
possession of, and using in his daily life, all his 
forces of soul, mind, and body. The question then 
of real success in life assumes large proportions, but 
let no one lose heart; such success may be attained 
when one sets oneself deliberately to work it out. 
The many things that are required for such suc¬ 
cess are worked out, one at a time, and the working 
out of any one particular thing is really the neces¬ 
sary preparation for the next upward step. There 
is a natural and lawful order about everything to 
be done in life, and one may soon come to under¬ 
stand this order if one desires such knowledge. At 
every moment in life there is some one thing near at 
hand that needs our attention; if we are mindful and 
make this our first object in doing, we shall find 


THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE 129 

after a time that, in all our doings, each thing will 
fall into its proper place, and we shall not be torn 
by conflicting desires. Since life is made up more 
largely of what people call the little things than of 
the great ones, the doing of the little things in the 
best possible way makes it easy for us later to do 
the greater things. But neglect in little things 
makes it impossible for any one to see the great 
things in all their bearings and therefore impossible 
for such a person to do them. 

One of the greatest elements making for success 
in life is the knowledge of one’s self, the knowledge 
of one’s powers and their rightful use. Life in every 
one is demanding expression. The tree is known 
by its fruit; the fruit is the final expression of the 
tree; similarly a man is known by what he is able 
to express. Expression is, therefore, the fruit on 
man’s tree of life, and if the expression is good the 
tree must be good. True expression is the result 
of true control, and the mind controls its thoughts 
so that one thinks what he wills to think; therefore 
when the mind becomes centered on what it desires 
to do, it has acquired control and the right use of 
its faculties. When the soul is dominated by its 
highest feelings so that in all man’s work there en¬ 
ters something of the real joy and hope, the real 
love and faith, then the man is using the real forces 


130 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

of life; he is putting himself into his work and will 
attain success because he deserves it. One need not 
hope for or expect success who is undeserving of it. 
The man who thinks only of how much he can get 
and how little he can give, is not deserving of suc¬ 
cess. The truly successful man is the one who en¬ 
riches the world and who thinks far more of what 
he can give to it than of what he receives from it. 
We are always thinking that material possessions 
should be our rewards for all effort expended by us, 
but the reward is with the worker in his work. 
True expression is far greater than possessions. 
Possessions are often only hindrances to further de¬ 
velopment ; they stand in our way of progress. We 
are so busily engaged in trying to keep hold of them 
that they interfere with real acquisition. Remem¬ 
ber, however, that success does not, of necessity, 
include material riches, although with many this is 
the aim and end of life. Material riches may be, 
to a limited degree, an expression of a successful 
life, but if this were all, life would be a failure 
rather than a success. There is a law of compen¬ 
sation ever at work and in the action of that law 
one might lose worldly goods and yet inherit eter¬ 
nal riches, or one might enter into worldly posses¬ 
sions and lose the heavenly. Whatever w 7 e want 
most and are most willing to work for, that we re- 


THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE 131 

ceive. Whatever we seek we shall as surely find. 

It seems to me that the greatest joys of life must 
come through true self-expression; that anything 
which hinders or retards such expression will de¬ 
prive us of much happiness. It is Carlyle, I be¬ 
lieve, who says that the development of character, 
and not happiness, is the chief end of life. Some 
one else has said that, while Jesus had promised His 
followers peace, he never promised them happi¬ 
ness. This may or may not be true, but there is 
as great a quest for happiness as for character or 
for peace. The longing desire for it in the mind 
of man is evidence of its reality; in fact, happiness 
should be the accompaniment of all harmonious de¬ 
velopment and when one is happy in his work he 
will do better work because of it. It is the very joy 
and happiness that, entering into one’s work, makes 
it living work, something that is vibrant with the 
real force of life. We all get what we deserve and 
we deserve only that for which we work. We can 
have what we desire if we are willing to pay the 
price, but we must render a real equivalent for what 
we receive. This applies to everything in life, and 
there is no true conscientious living and working 
that does not bring its own reward, because people 
make their own rewards and merit their own pun¬ 
ishments. Man makes his own fate. 


132 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT*? 

If we could only understand such things in early 
life it would save us a great deal of trouble and 
Useless effort; not that there really is such a thing 
as useless effort, for all effort has some meaning 
and some purpose, but I mean that a great deal of 
effort gives insignificant results, and results should 
be commensurate with one’s efforts. There are 
right ways of doing everything; there is also a par¬ 
tial or imperfect way. Why should any one take 
the hardest way of doing anything in life when he 
might equally well choose a much easier way and 
obtain more permanent gain? Knowing and doing 
should go hand in hand. He who is unwilling to 
know, that is, will not take the time or trouble to 
acquire knowledge, will certainly find himself defi¬ 
cient in his doing. In life there should be a con¬ 
stant effort to attain knowledge, not as a mere ac¬ 
quisition, but knowledge intended for definite ends 
and purposes. 

If we were to give the same amount of time to 
constructive thought that we so often give to de¬ 
structive or idle thought, we should day by day find 
ourselves better equipped for the work we are en¬ 
gaged in doing. All of life lies in the working-out 
process. There is continually something to be* 
known and something to be done. Work is a neces¬ 
sity to man’s salvation and no great life has ever 


THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE 133 

expressed itself on the planet save through work. 
To be great, we must work; to be successful, we 
must work; to accomplish anything worth while in 
this world, we must work; and the more we work, 
and the better we work the more successful we shall 
be. It is as well for us to understand first as last 
that success in life is to a marked degree dependent 
on the relations we bear to others; that people can 
aid or hinder; that sometimes a person who has de¬ 
veloped unusual power may find his whole life re¬ 
tarded and cramped by the people he associates 
with. There are people in this world whose whole 
lives spell disaster, and who are not only continually 
working injury to themselves, but injury to others; 
if we choose to relate ourselves to such persons, 
then we must take the responsibility for our own ac¬ 
tion. It is useless for us to waste time in trying to 
help people who will not help themselves, who have 
not got a realizing sense that they must work for 
themselves instead of being dependent on others; 
and such a sense will come to them far quicker by 
leaving them alone to fight their battles than 
through any efforts we can make in trying to put 
and to keep them on their feet. The world is filled 
with a false charity, a charity which tends to make 
parasites of people instead of strong, independent, 
self-reliant people who are able to understand their 


134 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

own needs and how to supply them. If we want to 
do things in this world, we must associate with the 
people who are doing things. I do not mean that 
people should not exercise sympathetic interest in 
others who are in need, but that interest should be 
carried only to a point of helping them to help them¬ 
selves. When it is carried beyond that, it is a posi¬ 
tive hindrance to the development of both. All peo¬ 
ple in the world who are healthy and strong should 
be engaged in some kind of work, work that is suf¬ 
ficient to provide for their daily needs. In fact 
many people who are weak would undoubtedly be 
strengthened if they made an effort to do something; 
their minds would become absorbed in the doing, and 
to some degree would be withdrawn from their weak¬ 
ness or disease, the work giving them opportunity 
to renew and strengthen their minds. In a really 
civilized community there should be no drones, no 
people living at the expense of other people; and no 
one would ever aspire to a success whereby one lived 
a life of idleness at the expense of those who worked 
for him. 

A true employer is one who is as actively engaged 
in his work as any one of his employees. The re¬ 
lationship that we bear to others in life is of far 
greater importance than we usually suppose. There 
must be real co-operation on the part of employer 


THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE 135 

and employee. How can any employer expect to 
get faithful service from the employee when he is 
not interested save in the amount of work he can get 
from him? He must learn to be as much interested 
in the success of those who are working for him as 
he is in his own success, for he cannot possibly gain 
true success if it is going to mean some one else’s 
loss. With what measure we mete it is measured 
back to us again. 

The laws of the Infinite are very exact in their 
working. One should never give to another some¬ 
thing that one would be unwilling to receive oneself 
under similar conditions. We have a perfect right 
to expect from others what we are giving to others, 
but what grounds of reason or of logic have we to 
expect more than we give? Furthermore, even if 
we do expect it, we are not going to receive it. 
Such persons may get the eye-service or the time- 
service, but the service which comes from the heart 
in not theirs unless they give such service. 

Many people in this day and generation, in their 
haste to get rich, forget many of the great prin¬ 
ciples which have, at one time or another in the 
history of the world, animated and controlled its 
best thinkers and workers. Even though riches may 
come, not having been acquired in the true way, they 
bring no satisfaction; yet even out of worldly riches 


136 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT 1 ? 

there may come a certain sense of satisfaction if 
they have been acquired through personal effort, and 
through honesty and integrity in one’s dealings with 
others. Whatever we expect out of anything in life 
we must bring to it, and must put into it; we cannot 
hope to reap that which we have not planted. It is 
what we bring to life that makes life what is it for 
us. Honesty and integrity of purpose in our deal¬ 
ings with others serve to call out the same qualities 
in them. If we want people to have faith in us, we 
must begin by having faith in them; if we want peo¬ 
ple to be kind and considerate in their treatment of 
us, then it will soonest come to us through our show¬ 
ing kindness and consideration to others. In fact, 
whatever we want people to give to us we must first 
of all give to them; whatever we wish to receive 
from the world, we must first give to the world. Any 
one can make his life as great a success as he chooses; 
any one can make his life whatever kind of a success 
he chooses; it is for him to determine what he wishes 
to be and what he wishes to do, and then to begin 
being and doing. All that goes out from him re¬ 
turns to him. It makes little difference by what 
name you call it, good or ill; a man receives of what 
he has given and to the degree he has given; through 
losing his life he may find it, and through finding 
his life he may lose it. Everything is dependent on 


THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE 137 

his own state of consciousness. The whole matter 
has been committed into his own hands. He has the 
power to make or to unmake, the power to create 
or destroy. Each person who has reached the years 
of discretion and understanding must see that the 
whole life is really what he is making it; if he is 
satisfied with what he is doing, then it remains with 
him to keep on in the same way; if he is dissatisfied 
and feels that he has been making mistakes, then let 
him know that he has exactly the same power to 
correct a mistake that he had to make it in the first 
place. But the man, who sees the error of his ways 
and who seeks to overcome through right thought 
and action, is in a far better position than if, blinded 
by his own conceit, he goes on doing the wrong and 
expecting good to come out of it. What we bring 
to life’s mirror is reflected back to us again; we can 
bring what we will, but the reflection will be the 
exact reproduction of what we bring, for it is not 
possible to avoid reaping the fruits of our own 
thoughts and actions. 

One should be kind and considerate in all one’s 
dealings with one’s fellow-men. Judgment and con¬ 
demnation of others should be avoided; neither should 
one be curious concerning any one else’s life. The 
men or the women engaged in making the most out 
of their own lives should never find time to criticise 


138 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

or to find fault with some one else’s way of doing. 
Attribute to others the same honesty and integrity 
in working out their plan of life as you would ex¬ 
pect others to do with you. Never ask a favour of 
any one that you would not as willingly grant to 
another. When you do not know definitely the right 
course to take in any matter rely on your intuitions 
to show you the way. One should never be per¬ 
suaded into the doing of something that goes con¬ 
trary to one’s intuition. While one may listen to 
the advice of others, it does not necessarily follow 
that one should act upon it. The wise man is he 
who is willing to look at every side of the question, 
and knowing all its pros and cons, decides for him¬ 
self; sometimes it is the part of wisdom to be pa¬ 
tient until one sees the right course to take, but 
when such a course is evident then one should strike 
while the iron is hot, in no half-hearted way but 
should put the full measure of oneself into the do¬ 
ing. Prompt action is of untold importance in the 
vital things of life; hesitation or procrastination is 
often the greatest barrier to one’s success. Never 
be timid or fearful concerning anything; know you- 
are right, then go ahead. The man who is engaged 
in attending to his own business has no time to give 
to attending to the business of others, except when 
he is asked to lend a helping hand to some one else. 


THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE 139 

Meddling or prying into any one else’s affairs is 
always to be deprecated. Whatever trust may be 
committed to one’s care by another should receive 
the greatest care and attention, and if one does not 
feel oneself capable of carrying out such a trust in 
the highest and best way, then one should never un¬ 
dertake it. 

Anything, to be well done, must get one’s undi¬ 
vided attention, that is, there is a time for every¬ 
thing and whether it is a time for work or a time 
for play or whatever it may be, one should become 
absorbed in the thing on hand. In taking this 
course, everything we do will be filled with meaning. 
Things that are casual or commonplace are what 
they are because we make them so; all of life may be 
filled with interest and there may be a newness and a 
freshness in everything we do if in heart and mind 
we bring that vivifying interest to it. We should 
never reach a place where we are thoroughly satis¬ 
fied ; there are always new and better ways of doing 
everything. Opportunity seen and seized to-day 
opens fresh opportunities for to-morrow. Never be 
satisfied with well-enough; only the mentally and 
physically lazy are contented with such a fool’s para¬ 
dise. The old ways and means are never sufficient 
to express new ideals. There is no finality in any¬ 
thing; there is no ultimate perfection; progress is 


Ho WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

eternal. One goal of attainment reached is the 
starting point for another. Give to life all that is 
best and truest in yourself and continue to do so. 
Make the world a better place to live in, for this is 
one object of life. Always be optimistic even in the 
face of defeat, because defeats are only temporary 
conditions; the defeat of to-day may only give us 
strength to overcome the same or even greater dif¬ 
ficulties on the morrow. Optimism, courage, inde¬ 
pendence, self-reliance should always form a part of 
one’s characteristics; if one finds oneself deficient in 
any one of these qualities, he should seek by every 
means at his command to acquire it. All real suc¬ 
cess in life is dependent on one’s spiritual, mental, 
and physical evolution. Success is the expression, 
the fruit of that evolution, the outer evidence of the 
inner truth, the visible revelation of that which is 
invisible; the tree is known by its fruit; if the fruit 
of one’s labours is wholesome and good to one’s fel¬ 
low-men, it must be self-evident that it has been 
produced through the lawful, orderly workings of 
one’s soul, and mind, and body; that it is a true ex¬ 
pression of right feeling, thought, and action; that 
is a real and substantial evidence of success in life. 
We can make life a success when we will so to make 
it, if that will is in thorough accord with the Uni¬ 
versal Will and Intelligence. No one can afford to 


THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE 141 

drift through life; it has been given to every man to 
work out the Divine Plan that has been written into 
his life; there is a lawful and orderly way of doing 
this; the law is written into the constitution of man’s 
being. Man can so co-operate with God that the 
outer man may become a true representative of God 
on earth; may attain to the measure of the full 
stature of a perfect man. This is the whole end and 
object of life. A man who is wise sees both object 
and end, strives to fulfill both, and in doing so real¬ 
izes his highest good and his highest happiness. 


CHAPTER XII 


SUPER-MAN 

y-> IFTY years ago the greatest scientists of the 
time claimed that there were only five avenues 
of knowledge, that all knowledge was to be derived 
through the senses. If this had been true, then the 
man with the highly developed sense-nature would 
have been in a better position to obtain real knowl¬ 
edge than the intellectual giant whose sense-nature 
was not so developed. In our own day, however, the 
most advanced scientists entertain no such beliefs. 
The mind is not a product of sense, neither a product 
of matter, but something transcending both. The 
mind is able to reach out and acquire knowledge and 
understanding that the most highly developed phys¬ 
ical man, with every sense keenly alert, could never 
idream of, let alone acquire. 

It is said that the elemental man has unfolded his 
sense-nature to a degree far beyond that enjoyed by 
more civilized or cultured people, and yet his life is 
bounded by a very narrow environment, and his 
knowledge is limited to a comparatively few things; 
while the man of mental attainments has a thousand- 


SUPER-MAN 


143 

fold larger environment, his knowledge reaching out 
to the very heavens, weighing the mass of the plan¬ 
ets, determining the elements of the most distant 
suns; to him “ day unto day uttereth speech, and 
night unto night sheweth forth knowledge 99 ; his feet 
are firmly planted on the earth, but his face is up¬ 
turned to the heavens. Slowly but surely the mys¬ 
teries, the secrets of the universe are being disclosed 
to his mind, and all the varying forces of nature are 
being used to accomplish his purposes. What the 
mind conceives, that it is able to accomplish, and the 
things that at one time would have been deemed 
sacrilegious to have sought out, are the things which 
are now looked upon as commonplace, and in many 
cases, have to be left behind, in order to press on to 
still more wonderful discoveries. So that it may be 
said of man, as it was once written in the hymn that 
referred to God: 

“ He plants His footsteps on the sea. 

And rides upon the storm.” 

The elements are coming to obey His will, and yet 
mind is only in its infancy, in the morning of a new 
day. Man has only begun his real battle of con¬ 
quest, and he will wage this battle until all things 
are put under foot, until the victory is gained. 

To a very great degree in the past, he has felt 


144 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

himself subject, not only to his environment, but to 
all kinds of circumstances, and on every hand his 
freedom was restricted. He had at best only a low 
estimate of his own powers; he was a puny thing; a 
“ worm of the dust,” unable to control himself or 
the forces about him; subject to all things. He is 
now beginning to feel his strength, to look upon him¬ 
self as the crowning work; from this time on, his 
battles will partake less and less of the physical. 
Mind will fight the real battle; the conquest of his 
world will come through what he is able to think, 
the forces of life will become his servants to obey 
his will. He has entered a new world that is not 
bounded by time or space, that is not even bounded 
by disease and death, a world in which he is going 
to overcome until the last enemy is destroyed; but the 
old ways and means are not going to prove sufficient 
either for his present or future needs, and it will be 
only as he leaves the old behind, and presses forward 
to that which is new that the victory will be attained 
and the real dominion and power will be gained. 

In the old way he placed his dependence in sym¬ 
bols, forms and all external things; in the new way, 
soul and mind are going to be the dominant factors. 
All that pertains to this life, this material world, 
will be the clay in the hands of the potter, out of 
which man will fashion a new world, a kingdom of 


SUPER-MAN 


145 

God on earth, an expression of an Infinite Plan; one 
that is found in his own consciousness of life, one 
that must take form and become the very image and 
likeness of what he, in his upward way from the earth 
to the heavens, from humanity to divinity, has 
thought and felt. The advent of the new man, 
Nietzsche’s “ super-man ” is near at hand; the man 
who shall in no sense be swayed through material 
gain or possession, the man who shall in no way be 
subject to his superficial emotional nature, but the 
thoroughly poised man, who, through knowing and 
understanding that consciousness—feeling and 
thinking, is more than all else, shall enter into a uni¬ 
versal, a cosmic consciousness and look out on all 
life as a ruler, a king, having dominion and power 
over all things, holding within his own hands the 
keys of life; subduing all things; controlling and 
directing, not only the full force of his own life, 
but causing all life, in its lower stages of develop¬ 
ment to respond to a newly awakened mind, a univer¬ 
sal Will that admits of no obstacles; a never-end¬ 
ing, yet an ever-ascending life. 

The new man instead of being a destroyer, will be 
a preserver, destruction being replaced by creation. 
The very forms will take on a more lasting, a more 
enduring nature, because of the permanency of the 
new consciousness that perceives life and intelligence 


146 what is new thought? 

written into all things. For this new spring-time 
will not only have come into the life of man, but 
everything without will typify it, symbolize it. The 
desert shall blossom as the rose, and the whole world 
shall rejoice and be glad. 

The new consciousness will have an Omnipotent, 
Omniscient, Omnipresent God as its center; and from 
this center of oneness will expand into a diversity 
of thoughts and ideas, all fashioned after the origi¬ 
nal One, all parts or degrees of a Universal Intelli¬ 
gence. This diversity of thoughts and ideas will in 
turn take form and become fashioned as things of 
beauty upon earth, an ever-expanding life and intel¬ 
ligence, an ever-diversified multiplicity of forms. 
The consciousness of the sense or elemental man, 
makes and keeps man a thing of this earth, but the 
consciousness of soul and mind makes man a divine 
being, makes man a son of the living God. The real 
battle of overcoming is not so much what man has to 
meet and contend with in his physical world, but 
rather an old consciousness, the consciousness of a 
past life and its activities; the consciousness of man, 
when he thought of himself as a miserable sinner, 
violating all the laws of God and being punished for 
such violation; the consciousness wherein he lived in 
a state of fear, battling for the preservation of the 
physical self; the consciousness of sin, disease and 


SUPER-MAN 


147 

death; all this has he written into his life in past 
phases of consciousness; a very Frankenstein of a 
consciousness; one that he had created out of false 
thoughts and emotional feelings, and it is this con¬ 
sciousness of the past which rises up as a nightmare 
in the present to hinder or retard him in his upward 
way. It is this subconsciousness of the past war¬ 
ring in his members so that the things that he would 
do he does not, and the things that he would refrain 
from doing he does. And so what seems to be the bad 
past rises up to keep man still in the bondage of 
earthly desire. It is no more the real I but the sin 
which dwelleth in us. Nevertheless, through true 
conscious thought and feeling there is being regis¬ 
tered every day in the subconscious that which, in 
the process of time, will destroy the old law of sin 
and death, and make manifest the law of the Spirit 
of Life. The person then who would enter into the 
new world must see to it that all true thought and 
feeling is the beginning of his creation of a new 
world, is the beginning of a new life; that, as posi¬ 
tive thoughts and feelings dominate, control and di¬ 
rect him in his every-day life that he is laying the 
foundation, not only for an eternal consciousness 
but also a habitation, a body that is to be eternal 
in the heavens; a body that is to be as eternal as 
the soul; a body that is to be free from sin and dis- 


148 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

ease and death, a body that will truly represent his 
real, his eternal consciousnes of life. 

The old consciousness can be overcome in only 
one way, not through denying it, not even through 
fighting, but through the substitution of the new 
for the old. In this way all real overcoming takes 
place. Whenever we stop to do battle with old 
states and conditions we are inviting defeat, we are 
giving undue power to the old consciousness, when 
real power is ever with the new. 

The person who always lives in the newness of 
life, is he who will become more than conqueror. 
Every obstacle in life is overcome when one goes 
direct to his true center of consciousness, the vital 
consciousness of the Spirit within, and then acts in 
mental harmony with that consciousness. 

Let it be remembered that all conscious mental 
action becomes later subconscious, establishing 
habits of thought and action, becoming an aid 
to true thought and action, or a detriment, a hin¬ 
drance if the consciousness is false or untrue. 
Thus it is clearly shown that man makes his 
life what it is, that soul and mind, feeling 
and thinking can co-operate with life’s laws 
that outer harmony may be as fully assured 
as inner harmony, that true mentality will express 
itself through a strong physical organism; that con- 


SUPER-MAN 


149 


sciousness makes our bodies just what they are, weak 
or diseased, strong or whole, that the keeping or 
developing of our lives has been committed into our 
own care, that through consciousness the body fitly 
represents all its varying degrees from high to low. 
Life is what we make it. 

A man’s enemies are those of his own household; 
all that he has ever been or done, all that he has ever 
felt or thought in the past, still survives in his sub¬ 
conscious mind, only waiting recognition or an awak¬ 
ening through conscious kindred thoughts or feel¬ 
ings. The wild animal, in fact, a whole menagerie 
of wild animals lurk in the jungle of subconscious¬ 
ness, only awaiting some conscious impulse of anger 
or hate to become fully awakened, and to dominate 
life as it was ruled in the past. The savage hides 
in the labyrinths of the subconscious, ready to make 
war and destroy; when true control is lost by the 
conscious mind every phase of animal and human life 
are to be found hidden away in man’s subconscious¬ 
ness, and each wrong or false conscious thought or 
feeling goes to add to the sum total of that which 
existed before. One may think, when giving way to 
false emotions or evil thinking, that it is only a 
momentary condition in his life, but that which is mo¬ 
mentary in consciousness becomes lasting in sub-con¬ 
sciousness ; that which in the conscious mind seems to 


150 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

live but a day or an hour, may live on in the sub-con- 
sciousness for countless days and hours; and let it 
be known that in our daily lives probably nine- 
tenths of our living is the direct result of sub-con¬ 
sciousness ; that our health, our happiness, our peace 
of mind become largely dependent on sub-conscious¬ 
ness, at least until one recognizes the necessity for 
conscious, true, positive thought and feeling. If one 
could always be conscious of the Eternal Life or 
Spirit that lives, and breathes, and moves in him, in 
the process of time he would overcome every enemy; 
he could subdue not only every animal, but the sav¬ 
age that lives within. The only way to overcome 
every false condition of thought and feeling is 
through a realization of what we are in reality, 
sons of God, joint-heirs with Christ, endowed with 
eternal life and intelligence, a full recognition of 
our own innate powers and possibilities—possibil¬ 
ities as sons of God—powers derived directly from 
an Omnipotent Source. Living like sons of God, 
in a true consciousness of life, we could make the sub¬ 
conscious mind so that in time the sub-conscious 
would give back truth instead of a lie; would give 
us back riches instead of poverty; would render us 
health instead of disease; would bring peace instead 
of discord; yea, would give us eternal life instead of 
that lie of lies, a never-ending death. 


SUPER-MAN 


151 

But we are all so much like the man that Jesus 
told of in one of His parables, who sowed good seed, 
and then while he slept, the enemy came and sowed 
the seed of the tares. It is a significant thought 
that only while he sleeps is the enemy able to sow 
the seed of the tares. We are asleep when we allow 
the mind to become negative. In a negative condi¬ 
tion of mind we become open to an influx of unreal 
thoughts and emotions from other people. The 
enemy sows the seed of the tares while we sleep; all 
negative thought is of the devil, who is the father of 
lies, and was a liar from the beginning. All nega¬ 
tive thought is destructive; all positive thought is 
creative; we must be either building up or tearing 
down. If our conscious thought-plans of life are 
constructive, then the sub-conscious will become con¬ 
structive too. Let no man be deceived; the seed 
which he sows in the conscious mind will be the fruit 
which he will reap in turn from the sub-conscious. 
Hatred begets hatred; anger begets anger; diseased 
thoughts beget a diseased body. “ Whatsoever a 
man soweth that shall he also reap.” If we are 
poor, if we are weak, the first cause has been con¬ 
scious poverty and weakness; we have written that 
into life and we have become what we have written. 
Just as Pilate said, “ What I have written, I have 
written,” so what one feels and thinks, that is what 


152 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

he becomes. It is not necessary, however, that any 
one should go on writing a book of death, when he 
can write a book of life, but his book of life cannot 
contain any of the errors or the negatives of the 
past. It must be a book filled with affirmations. I 
am one with all Life. I am one with all Intelligence. 
I am one with all the Health and Wholeness of Uni¬ 
versal Health and Universal Wholeness. I live, I 
move, and I have my being in God. I have now eter¬ 
nal life. I am rich because all things are mine. I 
am powerful because my will is one with Universal 
Will. Through heart and mind I control and di¬ 
rect the full force of my own life. My rightful in¬ 
heritance as a child of God brings to me every good 
and every perfect gift. All that heart and mind 
may desire is mine—is mine now. My kingdom of 
heaven is within my own life, and it is my privileget 
to express my inner kingdom in an outer world. 
God is for me, not against me. All power has been 
given unto me, and I have the eternal promise that 
“ to him who overcometh he shall be my son, and I 
shall be his God.” The deep within me speaks to 
the Everlasting Deep, and I know that I am son of 
God, a joint-heir with Christ having dominion and 
power both in the age that now is and in the age 
which is to come. 










































CHAPTER XIII 


SHADOW WORSHIP 

TT^OR ages mankind has been constantly living in 
the outside or in the letter of the word and as 
constantly failing to perceive the action of the in¬ 
dwelling Spirit. Man has apparently drawn his in¬ 
spirations and his knowledge of how to live life from 
his outer surroundings; living in a world filled with 
many forms, his mind became centered on them and 
he gave to them values far beyond what they pos¬ 
sessed. It was not enough that he should use them 
for legitimate ends and purposes, but he must be¬ 
come attached to them and enter into their pos¬ 
session. Later on this possession and attachment 
become an obsession controlling the life of man 
almost as if an evil spirit had entered into and 
possessed his life, so that instead of being the real 
owner and controller of material things, perhaps all 
unconscious to himself, he was owned and controlled 
by them. Any one may establish a wrong habit and 
in the process of time that habit becomes literally 
an obsession that controls his action; he may, in his 
own mind, deplore, and even seek to get away from 
155 


156 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

the habit, yet the force of it is so great that it is 
difficult to overcome. In exactly the same way man 
has established a habit of attachment to worldly 
things, without establishing any corresponding habit 
to heavenly things. He is filled with a desire to 
accumulate possessions and after he has accumulated, 
he is filled with all kinds of fears because he may 
lose, or others may take from him, that which he 
now calls his own. He believed that, in his quest 
for material riches, he was going to add to his 
mind’s peace and happiness, but instead of doing so, 
he only added to his own fear and disquiet. 

Many people have read how Aaron, at the request 
of the children of Israel, made a golden calf which 
they all bowed down to and worshiped. This has 
always been thought of as being exceedingly sacri¬ 
legious, and yet such worship existed ages before 
that event took place and has existed ever since. 
The world to-day worships the golden calf just as 
much as ever the children of Israel in the wilder¬ 
ness worshiped it. Out of the fullness of the heart 
the mouth speaketh—out of the fullness of desire 
there comes the full expression of such desire; and 
if the possession of material wealth is the animating 
desire of life, then to such the Inner Spirit, the God- 
life, will remain a sealed book. 

Desire is prayer. If desire is centered on gold. 


SHADOW WORSHIP 1# 

then the real prayer of one’s heart is rendered to 
the god of gold, the golden calf. People may say 
that it is not the gold they want; that their desire 
is not for gold but rather for what gold will bring; 
but it is all one and the same desire-—possession of 
things—and the person who seeks such possessions 
and fills his whole life with the thought of them, is 
further away from God in his desire or his prayers 
than the poor man who has never entered into pos¬ 
sessions of any kind. “ It is harder,” said the 
Nazarene, “ for a rich man to enter into the king¬ 
dom of God than for a camel to pass through the 
eye of a needle.” On another occasion He said to 
a rich man: “ Sell all that thou hast and give 

unto the poor: and then, come, follow me.” For He 
saw that the man’s riches were standing between him 
and the Kingdom of God. 

A man prays for that which he thinks is going 
to be for his greatest good. If practically all his 
time is given to the acquiring of worldly riches, 
how is it possible for him to enter into any knowl¬ 
edge of heavenly riches? He may say that he de¬ 
sires knowledge concerning the inner, the spiritual 
life, but if all his attention is given to outer ac¬ 
cumulation, then his acts belie his words. 

All outer things are signs of power, but no outer 
thing is power. All outer things are symbols of 


158 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

inner riches but all outer things do not make riches. 
The worldly mind is absorbed by the world in the 
things of the world. The spiritual mind is absorbed 
by the Spirit in the things of the Spirit. Let no 
man deceive himself by thinking it possible to serve 
two masters. Wherever mind and heart are cen¬ 
tered, real service follows. One can be animated 
and controlled by the mind of the world but such a 
one cannot be imbued with the Living Spirit. One 
may find his way through outer symbols to spiritual 
cause but when he reaches this knowledge of spir¬ 
itual causation, he has left all symbols behind; he 
can no more take them with him into the Sanctuary 
of the Spirit than he can take the gold he has ac¬ 
cumulated with him when he passes out of physical 
life. All symbols are the shadows of realities. In 
going to the light all shadows are left behind. “ Get 
thee behind me, Satan,” is the command of the Mas¬ 
ter, and Satan must obey. 

Occasionally you hear people say that they have 
no love of gold; that they desire it only for the 
power that it gives them. If one desires real power, 
let him know that it can never be found in that which 
is, at best, but a symbol of power; that it is the 
Spirit which giveth life and power, not the form. 
People may ask of what use are such material things, 
are they to be considered only a hindrance to man’s 


SHADOW WORSHIP, 159 

spiritual growth and development? No, everything 
serves some definite end, some purpose in the Divine 
Plan. But worldly things are at best only objects 
to be used as a means to some real end. The mind 
is not to offer up its prayer of desire for such 
things because every one who is in right relation to 
the Source of Life has everything necessary to life; 
so desire, prayer, should not be centered upon earthly 
things but on the Spirit. Worship should not be 
paid to the creation but to the Creator, “ Thou 
shalt not make for thyself any graven image or the 
likeness of anything that is in the heavens above 
or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the 
earth, thou shalt not bow down to them nor wor¬ 
ship them.” Whenever any one places his hopes, 
his desires, in the external, he is bowing down be¬ 
fore it and worshiping it; whenever any one places 
his happiness in the possession of material wealth, 
he is bowing down before it and worshiping it; when¬ 
ever any one seeks health and strength simply 
through material ways and means, he is bowing 
down to the material and worshiping it. 

Real happiness can come into the life of man only 
because of the indwelling Spirit of God making such 
happiness manifest to all who look within and de¬ 
sire and pray for it. Health and strength are gifts 
of God; they come to man as a natural outcome or* 


i6o WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


an expression of the Divine Life and Mind that is 
ever working within him to will and to do. 44 Ye 
are the temples of God and the Spirit of God dwelleth 
in you.” 44 Every good and every perfect gift ” is 
an expression of Universal Spirit and is given freely 
to all who desire, given ungrudgingly to those who 
seek. There is no worship of God in form— 
44 neither in these mountains nor yet in Jerusalem ” 
is God to be worshiped. 44 God is Spirit and they 
that worship Him must worship Him in the spirit 
and in truth.” Anything less than this does not 
constitute true worship; anything less than this 
is idolatry, whether one knows it or not. It is all 
idol-worship, the worship of forms and symbols, the 
letter coming in between God and man—separating, 
disintegrating. The letter killeth, the spirit alone 
giveth life, giveth every good and perfect gift. 

As I have said before every external thing sym¬ 
bolizes Universal Power; every external thing serves 
some particular need or purpose, and when it is 
rightly used and fulfills its use, it becomes a step¬ 
ping-stone whereby a man may mount to a knowl¬ 
edge of higher things. But attachment to material 
things constitutes man’s greatest obstacle in his quest 
for spiritual understanding. He may have every¬ 
thing that is considered necessary to life, and yet not 
be attached to, or controlled by them. Again he may 


SHADOW WORSHIP 161 

be in possession of but few things, but if his heart 
and mind are bound up in them, it makes him a vir¬ 
tual slave to his worldly possessions. 

Elsewhere I have said that freedom is necessary 
to symmetrical growth or development. A man can 
never be really free who allows himself to become at¬ 
tached to or controlled by his material possessions. 
People should understand that material things are 
entrusted to their care only in order to make the 
best use of them. There is a statement in the Old 
Testament which reads: “ The cattle on a thousand 

hills are mine.” Nevertheless each individual who 
has few or many cattle in his possession never thinks 
of them in that way, but rather as being his own per¬ 
sonal property. All things are simply lent to us 
for a season and we are held responsible for their 
use. We can give to everything its rightful use, 
and everything may be used to accomplish some good 
end or purpose. The use of everything in its right 
way will serve to establish freedom. 

Often men strive for a lifetime to accumulate vast 
riches, giving up their whole lives, devoting their 
whole time to accumulation to the exclusion of every¬ 
thing else, save their sleeping and eating; their whole 
lives are measured by their possessions. 46 What 
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in ex- 


162 what is new thought? 

change for his soul? For when a man is engaged 
in material acquisition, he loses all sight of his spir¬ 
itual selfhood, his mind being so centered upon gain 
that he never takes thought of spiritual gain, and 
so becomes lost, as it were, in a wilderness of his own 
making. Then a time comes when he must leave all 
behind; his whole struggle and fight in life for the 
wealth of the world closes, and he not only loses all 
he has accumulated but he enters into his new life 
in a state of abject spiritual poverty and what then 
has he profited by gaining even the whole world? 
Of what advantage has it been when he has had to 
leave it all behind? Truly “ ye cannot serve God 
and mammon.” A man need not think that he is 
going to serve mammon while in the body, and God 
when he passes out of the body. What preparation 
has he made for any other service than that which 
he was engaged in while on earth? 

But the acquiring of material weath is not the 
only kind of shadow-worship. The homage that is 
given to gold may be the greatest, but there are 
other forms of worship that are covered with a more 
specious veneer and which more readily deceive the 
minds of people because, superficially viewed, they 
seemed to pertain to the spiritual life. Let it be re¬ 
membered that no form of any kind, whether in the 
heavens above, or on the earth beneath, or in the 


SHADOW WORSHIP 163 

waters under the earth, is to be worshiped; and yet, 
man’s whole religious life is often made up of creed, 
ceremonial and form, and in connection with this 
there is a more subtle hypocrisy than in the worship 
of gold. Religious creeds, forms and symbols are 
all of man’s making. Why should he worship any¬ 
thing less than himself? Why should he blindly 
accept and venerate creeds or symbols which have 
become musty with the ages? Originally, when first 
formulated, they undoubtedly were expressions of 
man’s thought and feeling. At best they are not 
more than this. But a man’s salvation must con¬ 
sist in what he feels, thinks and acts himself. It is 
not necessary that he should go back to a dead past, 
but rather should he seek to find the truth in the liv¬ 
ing present. “ Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
God and Him only shalt thou serve.” 

We worship God best when we are living in con¬ 
formity with our highest ideals. We worship God 
most when we are rendering loving service to our 
fellow-men. The old is to be left behind; every 
new day should bring new desires and aspirations. 
No external thing, no matter how sacred the name 
or names it has been given, is to be worshiped. The 
highest form of worship is the communion of one’s 
own soul with the great Over-Soul. The ultimate 
Authority is resident in one’s own life and the 


164 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

“ I AM ” is sufficient to guide one into the ways of all 
truth and righteousness. <£ Neither in this temple 
nor yet in Jerusalem” is God to be worshiped; 
neither in creed nor in ceremonial is God to be wor¬ 
shiped. The letter killeth—the Spirit giveth life. 
God is one God. He alone is to be worshiped and 
whoever promulgates the truth of this is his prophet. 
If God is one, the religion which flows from God to 
man must partake of this oneness, and any one, no 
matter what his religion may be or by what name he 
calls it, if he will leave its outer plane, its forms, 
creeds and ceremonials behind, and seek for its Spirit 
in the silence, in spirit and in truth, will come 
to know God. Creation is good; it is an expression 
of Divine Love and Wisdom but man does not touch 
God through his outer senses; the outer senses sym¬ 
bolize inner senses. Man comes into touch with Di¬ 
vinity, through the Divinity which is in his own life. 
He has inner senses which reveal to him the Presence 
of God. “ The pure in heart shall see God.” “ No 
man hath seen God at any time,” but the Christ, 
the Son of God that moves and lives in every soul, 
will declare, will disclose God to us as indwelling 
love. 

The real worship of God must therefore come 
through man’s divine consciousness, the conscious¬ 
ness which alone can come through the recognition of 


SHADOW WORSHIP 165 

the indwelling Spirit. How long shall men continue 
to deceive themselves by thinking that there can be 
any real worship of God in a blind conformity to 
anything or to all things that are purely external 
in life? How long shall the self-appointed priest¬ 
hood or clergy seek to blind the eyes or to dull the 
ears of their followers in order that they may have 
temporal power? This was not the way of the Mas¬ 
ter whose servants they claim to be; yet the servant 
is supposed to be a true follower of the Master, a 
true expounder of His doctrine, and the doctrine of 
the Master was to preach the Gospel, a Gospel of 
great joy, a Gospel of glad tidings, and to heal the 
sick. Are the servants of the Master engaged in 
doing this? Is their Gospel one of glad tidings? 
Is it one of healing the sick? Is it one of release to 
the captives, of recovery of sight to the blind? of 
healing the bruised? No, the Spirit of His Gospel 
is covered up with all the non-essentials that have 
nothing whatsoever to do with pure and undefiled re¬ 
ligion. They be blind leaders of the blind and be¬ 
cause of them the world is filled with an idolatry 
wherein everything is worshiped but the one living 
and true God. His laws are either unknown or made 
of none effect, and men are kept in a bondage to 
false ideas. Religion should be as pure and spon¬ 
taneous as the running brook, but whenever it be- 


166 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


comes crystallized into creed or form it loses its 
effectiveness and retards spiritual growth. 

The Spirit is just as much imprisoned in man’s 
soul as the sun is imprisoned in the tree, or perhaps a 
better illustration would be the coal that is hundreds 
of feet beneath the ground, hidden away from the 
light. The only liberation that can come is through 
the destruction of the form so that the Spirit may 
free itself. With the crystallization, growth is at 
its lowest degree; activity has practically ceased, and 
the only hope is that into every form has been written 
something of the undying Spirit and that this Spirit 
will, sooner or later, bring about disintegration of 
form, just as the sunlight, stored up in the tree 
or in the coal, will eventually liberate itself by the 
consuming fire. Man may build all kinds of bar¬ 
riers between himself and God, but man can never 
destroy that Divine spark which is within his life, 
that Light which shineth in the darkness, which man, 
because of his earnest shadow-worship, fails to see; 
but a time will come when that Light shall become 
the consuming force to destroy all idols that man has 
made for himself to worship. Thou shalt worship 
the living and the true God and Him only shalt thou 
serve. Only in true service can there be any real 
happiness because man must become attuned to the 
Divine Laws, he must respond to the Eternal vibra- 


SHADOW WORSHIP 1167 

tions. The soul within him must consciously be¬ 
come related to the Source of its being. A real help 
and strength will come when one is in harmony with 
the inner and the outer consciousness of life, when a 
man is at one with God and his fellow-man. Keep 
the mind open and free to receive, but receive only 
in order to prove. Know that one must think and 
act for oneself in a strong, self-reliant way before 
one can become of real service to one’s fellow-men. 
Know that one must be led of the Spirit and that one 
may have knowledge of the Spirit through an ardent 
desire to know how best to live. Lay aside all 
weights which largely consist in attachments to the 
things of one’s external world. Know that every¬ 
thing has its place and its purpose in the Divine Plan 
and then see to it that in your relationship to it, it 
is not made to do duty for something else. Things 
are good only when used in the way they were in¬ 
tended to be used. Do not make that which is 
greater subordinate to that which is less. Know 
that your soul is greater than your mind and that 
your mind is greater than your body. Keep the 
body subject to the mind; keep the mind subordinate 
to the soul and all will go well. You will then be liv¬ 
ing life as it was intended that it should be lived, 
in a thoroughly whole, a thoroughly complete way. 
Work together with God to perfect your own life. 


168 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


Seek to live your highest ideals and remember that 
living means not only having ideals, but giving full 
and free expression to them. Try to be all out¬ 
wardly that you feel yourself to be inwardly. Re¬ 
joice and be glad in all that you do. Know of a 
very truth that you are a son of the living God, 
endowed with life eternal, endowed with a wondrous 
capacity for love and joy, for happiness and peace. 
Live up to your very highest prerogative by worship¬ 
ing and serving the one living and true God and 
know of a truth that it is that one God Who is work¬ 
ing within you to will and to do. Put your faith and 
trust in Him, and in doing that you will come to know 
how to use all things in a righteous way; you will 
come to a full realization of what life really means. 
You can do this for yourself and no one else can do 
it for you. Work out your own salvation and when 
you have worked it out, you will have entered into 
the knowledge of the Kingdom of God, a knowl¬ 
edge of the power, a knowledge of the possibilities 
that even now exist potentially in the life, only 
awaiting their full recognition and after recognition 
their use. Use everything in the present with the 
thought that through its use will come greater power 
and richer possibilities. Worship the Lord thy God 
and Him alone serve. Leave all the shadows behind 
and press ever upward and onward to the light. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE ASCENT OF MAN 

IN man’s development from the lowest primitive 
savage to the most highly developed civilized 
man there has been from first to last a lawful or¬ 
derly progression. Viewed superficially, facts may 
seem to contradict this assertion. There have been 
periods in the world’s history when human progress 
was at a standstill; yes, and there have been times 
when the hands of the clock of time seemed to be 
turned back, notably so, in what is known as the 
Dark Ages. But let it be remembered that what we 
see going on in nature is, in a larger way, taking 
place in the life of man. Humanity has its seasons 
of winter and summer, of night and day, of growth 
and rest, but day inevitably follows night. Just as 
the Renaissance followed the Dark Ages, so the night 
of materialism of the nineteenth century is being 
followed by a spiritual awakening in the twentieth. 
In life there is the ever-renewing process. Things 
seem to go and come again, but with their coming 
there is an additional something as in the growing 
of a tree, which shows its circle for each year of its 
169 


1 7 0 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

growth. It is always a circle, for the pressure from 
the heart of the tree is continually expanding the 
outer circle, in fact all the circles, so that the tree 
is growing greater and greater in circumference. 
Its winter is only a temporary period of rest, and in 
the spring-time its activities are renewed again. 
What is true of the tree is true concerning all life. 
The tendency is ever from that which is infinitely 
small to that which is infinitely great, and there are 
no retrograde circles but an ever-ascending life., 
The tiny spark of consciousness in the savage event¬ 
ually becomes the living flame of spiritual light. 
The earthly Adam has, although only in a latent or 
potential way, within his consciousness the Image 
and likeness of God; nevertheless, like the tree, in 
his cycles of development he becomes the glorified 
Christ. Man’s journey is from earth to heaven, 
from humanity to divinity. At times he is deflected 
from his course, just as one planet passing another 
is deflected for a time, but only to return later to 
its own orbit and continue its way. The pressure 
of circumstances and environment may deflect and 
retard growth to a degree, but nothing can stop the 
soul of man in its progress to a full, a perfect con¬ 
sciousness of God, Freedom, and Immortality. 

Consciousness is the greatest factor in human ex¬ 
istence ; “ as a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” 


THE ASCENT OF MAN 


171 

What we feel and think that we become, that we ex¬ 
press, but consciousness is a constant growing or, 
at least, it is an ever-unfolding of mind and soul, of 
Wisdom and Love. In its earlier stages it had to do 
solely with the things which appeal to man through 
his sense nature, these things acted upon his life 
for what to him seemed to be good or evil. They 
are the first beginnings of a human consciousness 
wherein everything is viewed in a partial or incom¬ 
plete way. But human consciousness is taught 
through experience; and each and every experience 
in life brings to light some truth; and so, little by 
little, man comes through his many and varied ex¬ 
periences to realize his own relationship to life, and 
the necessity for adjustment to it. He sees all the 
evil to be simply lack of adjustment, a failure to 
realize his relationship to life and its environment. 
With the ever-growing consciousness there is an ever- 
increasing need to live that consciousness, to realize 
and become its highest ideals; for only in the doing 
of this, can man be at peace with himself and he must 
be at peace with himself before he can be at peace 
with God or his fellowman. 

The horizon of life is, therefore, an ever-widening 
one; no matter how great an ideal may be to-day, if 
there is the conscious effort to live it, a still greater 
ideal will present itself on the morrow. Our ideals 


172 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

form our inner consciousness and as we seek to give 
expression to them they become an ever-increasing 
factor in life. Through our ideals we may pass 
from one height of glory to another, but man will be 
able to do this only through living them, through 
being them. There is a Plan written into the life of 
man which at some time and somewhere must be fully 
expressed. Consciousness of this and a desire to 
know the Plan and work it out will be of the greatest 
aid in hastening the time when man, through knowl¬ 
edge and understanding, shall have worked out the 
full strength and freedom of his own life. With 
the ever-unfolding life there comes an ever-increas¬ 
ing consciousness. Before this consciousness, old 
things pass away and there is an ever-becoming, and 
yet never-ending newness. With this ever-increas¬ 
ing knowledge there come new and better ways of 
adaptation to life, of harmonious adjustment to en¬ 
vironment, of the relationship of the part to the 
whole, co-operation with one’s fellowmen for the 
mutual good and benefit of all, co-operation with the 
Supreme Life and Intelligence, so that one swings 
into an orbit where there is conscious co-operation 
with the Inner Will and the Universal Law. Law 
and order prevail, and all things are seen to be 
working for good; whereas, before such conscious¬ 
ness came, all life seemed to be chaotic—a battle- 


173 


THE ASCENT OF MAN 

ground in which the forces of good and evil were 
contending for supremacy, a battle in which the 
struggle for life ended in death. Only in the new 
consciousness is the victory gained; only in the new 
consciousness does man pass from death unto life; 
only in the new consciousness does man become a 
son of God, having dominion and power over all 
things. From first to last the whole process is one 
of overcoming. Each thing is good in its place; 
each thing serves its purpose in life, but in the on¬ 
ward trend of life we do not cross bridges in order 
to retrace our steps and recross these same bridges. 
No, the way is a strait and narrow way that leads 
ever upward and onward. We must leave the things 
of the past behind; we must press forward to those 
things which lie before; one height attained dis¬ 
closes new heights to be attained. In this way and 
only in this way can life become constantly renewed. 
There may be the occasional wait by the wayside, but 
there can be no retracing of one’s steps. 

The great difference between the old and the new 
consciousness is that the old consciousness concerned 
itself with temporal things; things which were com¬ 
ing and going; things in which change followed 
change. Then came desire not only to enjoy but 
to possess, and man instead of possessing was pos¬ 
sessed, instead of being the master of things, he was 


i 7 4 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

mastered by them, so that when he lost his much 
coveted possessions he became inconsolable over his 
losses. Life was made up of his possessions; to pos¬ 
sess was the ruling factor in his life. The desire for 
possession took many and subtle forms. In one 
state of consciousness it was merely for the gratifi¬ 
cation of man’s animal desires; in another, that he 
might receive the praise of others; again it became 
a desire for possession that he might have, and use 
power over his fellowmen. In fact in the lower con¬ 
sciousness, possession always meant the attainment 
of selfish aims and purposes, and because man is not 
separate or detached, but a part of the universal 
whole, his selfish desires could never become fully 
realized, there was always something to be desired. 

Just as it was formerly said of Alexander the 
Great, when he had conquered all the known world* 
that he wept because there were no other worlds to 
conquer, so now if any one man could acquire all the 
riches of the world, in doing so he could never real¬ 
ize his mind’s or heart’s desire. He would still be 
as far from the goal of his ambition as when he had 
first undertaken his quest, for all external things are 
only outer evidences or symbols of inner forces, and 
unless one has entered into the consciousness of these 
inner forces, the outer things are meaningless. 

In the outer consciousness man is ever trying to 


THE ASCENT OF MAN 175 

realize health and happiness through those things 
which can bring to him neither the one nor the 
other, until at last in sheer disappointment he turns 
from the symbols and begins to live in that which is 
true and that which is eternal. There is nothing 
meaningless or purposeless in life; the outer con¬ 
sciousness was a necessary condition in the life of 
man before there could be any real inner conscious¬ 
ness, and the man or woman who has lived that outer 
consciousness in a strong aggressive way, who has 
fought out its victories and suffered its defeats, 
will far better appreciate the new consciousness 
when it comes. But with the coming of the new, the 
old order passes; every part is to be considered in its 
relation to the whole; outer things become subor¬ 
dinate to inner ideals. Man is no longer ruled but 
becomes a ruler of things; the slave has become the 
master, and all life takes on a new meaning. 

The fundamental activity in life we know to be 
what we feel; next in importance is what we think; 
last of all what we are able to express in outer 
action. Consciousness thus becomes love, wisdom, 
and expression, and only as this order is followed is 
it possible for a man to know who or what he is. 
Only as this order is followed is it possible for a 
man to enter into true relationship with God and 
man, and into right adjustment to environment. 


176 what is new thought? 

Only as this order is followed can a man ever hope 
to attain to the full mastery of his own life and to 
make circumstances with the aim of controlling his 
own destiny. This is no idle dream or the conjur¬ 
ing of one’s imagination to make things seem 
otherwise than they are, but a glorious reality to 
all who, having left the consciousness of external 
things behind them for a season, are able to pene¬ 
trate into the hidden mysteries of the Kingdom of 
God, which are found first in individual conscious¬ 
ness and are then realized through thought and 
feeling in a purely individual way. This marks, 
however, the beginning of a universal consciousness 
wherein individual will and purpose become one with 
Universal Law and Order. The mysteries of the 
Kingdom of God are all locked up within the human 
soul. He who seeks them shall find, and to him who 
knocks, the door shall be opened. But the Kingdom 
does not come unsought. Desire, prayer, medita¬ 
tion, are the ways by which it is entered. In the 
end all reach the same goal, but the man who knows 
what he is seeking and how it is to be sought is cer¬ 
tain to realize his desire not only in a stronger and 
more harmonious way, but in a much shorter period 
of time than one who, in a spirit of unrest, seeks an 
intangible something without knowing why or where¬ 
fore, but only knowing the urge of his unrest. 


THE ASCENT OF MAN 177 

From the elemental life of man all the way up, 
there is a preparation going on in order to fit him 
for the life he is eventually to live. In the elemental 
life where man’s senses constitute his chief guide, 
the man who uses them in a strong temperate way 
soon passes the man who abuses them or who becomes 
weakened through intemperate uses of them. So it 
is, all the way through life. The true use of what¬ 
ever talents or powers we may be in possession of 
brings with it the ever increasing growth, the ever 
renewing power. Physically we become strong 
through the use of every organ of the body; men¬ 
tally we become strong through the use of every fac¬ 
ulty of mind, and spiritually we become strong 
through the use of every attribute of the soul. 
Senses, faculties, attributes, are all gifts from the 
Giver of every good and every perfect gift. Man, 
having entered into possession of them, must use 
them to work out a full and complete salvation. 
Salvation will exempt his body from pain, disease, 
and death, and make it as immortal as is his mind 
or his soul. Salvation will also free his mind from 
degradation and a sense of sin, a salvation wherein 
it will be clearly seen that God and His creation are 
all there is, that man as soul, mind, and body is one 
with the All-Life, one with the All-Intelligence, and 
that the part is as eternal as the whole. Yes, man 


178 what is new thought? 

is working out a salvation. Each man is working 
it out in his own way, and no one can do this work¬ 
ing out for any one else. It is the task appointed 
and no one may or can enter into the Kingdom of 
God without having traveled all of life’s pathway 
from the Adam to the Christ, from the consciousness 
of earthly things to the consciousness of heavenly 
things, from the weakness of the human will to the 
becoming one with Universal Will and Power. From 
first to last it has been a preparing of the way for 
the incoming of the Lord, a realization of our son- 
ship, and we can well understand that passage in 
Revelation “ He that overcometh ... I will be 
his God, and he shall be my son.” All the way from 
the Adam to the Christ men have been sons of God, 
but only the Christ has had the full consciousness 
of that sonship. We cannot act or be like sons of 
God so long as, in our consciousness, we look upon 
ourselves as miserable sinners, worms of the dust, 
outcasts from God. We shall be held in bondage to 
that consciousness, and while we live it in conscious¬ 
ness we shall express it in outer action. " As a man 
thinketh in his heart so is he.” 

The world to-day is filled with unrest; it is seek¬ 
ing for a panacea for its numerous diseases and 
pains. In its consciousness it still turns to external 
ways and means of finding relief. New material 


THE ASCENT OF MAN 


179 

ways and means for the healing of the body, new eco¬ 
nomic and social forms for the healing of the mind, 
and the soul is all but forgotten. Nevertheless the 
present unrest is in reality but the harbinger of the 
coming of a new day, not a day that is far off, but 
one that is near to hand, when the teaching of the 
Nazarene shall be understood as it never has been 
in the past, when many shall understand what He 
meant when He said “ Seek ye first the kingdom of 
God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall 
be added unto you,” and when He also said; “ The 
kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither 
shall they say, lo here! lo there! for, behold the 
kingdom of God is within you.” This new con¬ 
sciousness is only awaiting recognition; the person 
who seeks it shall find it, and the person who knocks, 
to him shall the door be opened, and a new heaven 
and a new earth shall be revealed to all who enter 
this new consciousness of the Life Eternal. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE MIND’S CULTIVATION 

r I HIE mind of man may be likened to a garden 
wherein grow many varieties of plants and 
flowers. First of all before the seed can be planted 
by the gardener there is the necessary preparation 
of the soil. The earth which is to form the coming 
environment of the seed has to be made mellow, as 
it were, through either plowing or digging up, 
and a general preparation has to be made so that 
the seed shall have every opportunity of growth. 
After this comes the selection of the seed and care 
must be exercised in order to get the best seed of 
any given variety or kind of plant. The gardener 
knows, too, that while all plants require the sun’s 
light some need more of it than others. But even 
after the seed is planted his work is not yet done. 
He has made the conditions favourable for the 
growth or the development of the seed. The time 
comes at last and the little green blade forces its way 
into the light of an outer world. The trained eyes of 
the gardener recognize that the tiny plant comes from 
the seed he has planted. As plant after plant ap- 
180 



THE MIND’S CULTIVATION 181 


pears he recognizes the form that each should take; 
but ere long he finds other plants growing that are 
not from the seed that he planted. If he were to 
leave these plants to grow, they might choke out 
or retard the growth of the others, and so what is 
called the weeding out process takes place. Again 
if the season is a dry one his plants require water¬ 
ing; in fact, there is always something for him to 
do; his constant attention is required. And so in 
everything he does, if he is a wise and skillful gar¬ 
dener, he does it with a definite object in view; and 
in the end the results show that he is justified in all 
his doing, that he has gained a real reward for his 
unremitting toil and the knowledge used in all his 
labours. The one thing to be observed is an orderly 
succession in all that he does; the preparation of the 
earth, the selection of the seed, proper times and 
places for planting it, the weeding of the ground, 
the watering of the plants, etc.; if any one thing 
had been left undone in his plan the results obtained 
would not have been the same. Everything has its 
order, but everything is correlated. 

So it is in human life. There is the soil in which 
everything grows; this soil we call the mind. In 
one respect there is a difference between what the 
gardener does and what the Supreme Gardener has 
done for man; for in the life of man the seed is al- 


182 what is new thoughts 


ready planted and it has been left for him simply to 
till the soil, to keep it free from weeds, and through 
unremitting thought and action to cause every plant 
that the Father has planted to grow until it blossoms 
forth in all its wonder and beauty of colour, and to 
weed out every false plant whose seed has found 
lodgment in the mind. If we are wise gardeners 
we shall use law and order in everything we do. 
We shall come to know that, while each plant may 
differ from all the other plants, as regards both 
form and colour, yet it is the one Life living in each, 
so that all the plants are correlated. All require at¬ 
tention and care on the part of the gardener; no 
plant must be unduly cultivated at the expense of 
any other plants. 

Sometimes a gardener will pluck off the buds of 
a growing plant, leaving but one bud that grows 
ever and ever larger until he has a glorious flower; 
but this flower has been produced at the expense of 
many other flowers, all as beautiful and as perfect 
in their way, although none of them as large as the 
single one. Yet the many buds, if left unplucked, 
would have given a greater quantity than the single 
one could be made to do. 

In the garden of life we sometimes destroy many 
buds in order to have one beautiful flower. Other 
people looking at this flower call it genius —one 


THE MIND’S CULTIVATION 183 

flower and one alone, developed at the expense of 
all the rest. What we need more than all the rest 
is to cultivate life’s plants so that every bud may 
blossom forth in its own beauty; that life may be 
fully rounded out so that no one seed shall fail to 
bring forth fruit after its kind. Each plant and 
each flower has in use a beauty of its own; one is 
as necessary as another. There is order in growth 
so that one may blossom sooner than another, but 
each seed or talent God has written into the life of 
man must grow and bring forth fruit after its kind, 
and the wise gardener will be the one who is just as 
mindful of the growth and development of one seed 
as of another. The man without knowledge of gar¬ 
dening would have comparatively little success even 
if he had everything necessary, the soil, the seed, the 
fertilizer and the tools to work the soil with, along¬ 
side of the skilled gardener who had exactly the 
same things to work with but who added to that the 
knowledge he had acquired through his experience in 
gardening. Hence before one can have perfected 
results he must have acquired the necessary knowl¬ 
edge to get such results. 

Knowledge comes to us in many ways, sometimes 
through one’s own experience, sometimes through 
watching the experience of others. Knowledge to 
some degree is necessary in everything we do, but in 


184 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

the cultivation of it we should always see it not as 
something that is final, but rather a means to an 
end. Knowledge shows us how to cultivate all the 
seeds planted in the garden of life, but knowledge 
does not cause them to grow; only when knowledge 
is reinforced by action will the growth take place. 
One need not hope to receive without giving. 

Clearness and conciseness of thought is a neces¬ 
sary adjunct of knowledge. That which is vague 
and indistinct in the mind can become neither fully 
nor strongly expressed, and expression should be the 
natural outcome of knowledge. Every thought 
should, therefore, picture itself in the mind in a 
clear, concise, and distinct way; but before this can 
be done the mind must become thoroughly centered 
on what it is thinking. This centering will tend, in 
turn, to give full outer expression to the inner 
thought either in the spoken word or in the more 
physical action. We might call this the seed of 
thoughtfulness. Thought-ful means the whole or 
the complete thought. From thoughtfulness comes 
the tactful speech. 

Tactfulness , although a small plant, is, neverthe¬ 
less, a true one. Deceitfulness is its contradictory 
or the weed that should be uprooted. One should 
learn to be straightforward but tactful in his speech 
with others; and being this, he is going to save a 


THE MIND’S CULTIVATION 185 

great many heartaches which often come from hon¬ 
esty of purpose but a decided lack of tact. 

Practical application is another blossom on the 
tree of knowledge, for knowledge is of little value 
unless one is able to use it. There is a very prac¬ 
tical side to life that no one can ignore with impun¬ 
ity. While the greater life lives in the ideal, yet 
every living ideal must find outer expression; every 
seed must unfold, must grow in order that it may 
speak or tell the world that which was written into 
the heart, the life of the seed. Expression, there¬ 
fore, is the natural outcome of all knowledge. Theo¬ 
ries that are never applied are like so many seeds 
that have never been planted, and are, therefore, of 
no use until they are planted or applied. “ What¬ 
soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” 
Apply the mind to the acquiring of knowledge and 
then to the use of it. 

Ideality is not of the tree of knowledge but is 
one of the most beautiful flowers from the tree of 
life. Ideality fills the mind with wondrous visions 
transcending those that the outer world has to offer, 
and yet ideality is only the foretaste of the things 
that are to be. The greater things are yet to come, 
and ideality, in order to grow and to unfold to her 
all her inner beauty, must be thoroughly cultivated; 
it is only through the living of the ideal that such 


186 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT 1 ? 

growth continues. Our ideals hold us to strict ac¬ 
countability; failure to live and manifest them 
brings the only real judgment or condemnation that 
man will ever encounter. Each man’s ideals form 
his real court of justice where judgment and con¬ 
demnation are meted out for the failure to live what 
one has been able to perceive. No matter how glori¬ 
ous the ideal may be that enters into the mind of 
any one, that ideal is there because it is possible of 
realization. No ideal can be too great or too high 
for man to realize, to manifest, to become. He alone 
is a true man who is loyal to his highest ideals. 
The ideal is always strengthened and made perma¬ 
nent through courage and perseverance; one also 
requires the courage of conviction. When a man is 
convinced of the truth of anything let him cour¬ 
ageously stand fast, a living expression of the truth. 
What matters what the world thinks or says? The 
world said John the Baptist was possessed of a 
devil, and that Jesus of Nazareth was a glutton and 
a winebibber, and a friend 1 of sinners. If we are 
courageously steadfast to our highest ideals, the 
world will without doubt judge and condemn to-day, 
but in the future time will rise up and call us blessed. 

There is one plant in the garden of life that can¬ 
not be ignored without serious consequences. Men 
call it concentration . The person who cultivates 


THE MIND’S CULTIVATION 187 

this plant is always thoroughly interested in his 
work. Because he is interested he finds real joy, 
and in all that he does he is happy in the doing. 
His work is a true manifestation of his thought. 
He works with ease; he works rapidly because his 
mind is centered on whatever he does. He brings 
the full force of life to his task and because of this 
he is able to accomplish all the little and all the great; 
things necessary to a well-ordered life. 

Meditation is the ascension lily; before it reaches 
its full blossom it is known as desire or prayer, but 
when meditation has blossomed to its full, true use, 
one is able to enter into the Kingdom of God, that 
Kingdom of love, and faith, of hope and joy, of 
light and peace. But meditation is a rare plant be¬ 
cause few care or know how to cultivate it, and while 
one is cultivating it one must give to it one’s full at¬ 
tention. He must shut out everything that has to 
do with the outer world before he can enter into a 
consciousness, by the aid of meditation, of an un¬ 
discovered world that is both within and without but 
whose gateways are closed until, through meditation, 
he knocks and the gate is opened. Cultivate desire; 
cultivate prayer; cultivate meditation; because in 
this way and in this way alone does one enter into 
the life and peace and the joy that are eternal. 

Patience is the little forget-me-not in this garden 


188 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


where so many plants are blossoming. Patience is 
often overlooked or deemed to be of little value; but 
patience has her reward for those who appreciate 
her beauty. She does not thrust herself upon any 
one, but the person who loves her comes to know that 
she is necessary to the perfecting of many things in 
the daily round of life. 

Unselfishness is the rose radiating out its beauty 
and its perfume to brighten, bless and uplift all who 
may come within its influence, giving them of its 
very heart-essence. In its wild state it existed at 
first for itself and itself alone, but it did so because 
it knew no better. People at first looked upon it as 
a weed, and designated it by the name of selfishness, 
but as the self came under cultivation it unfolded 
and blossomed into this beautiful rose. 

It will be found that many plants in the garden 
of life appear at first to be little better than weeds 
to be plucked and cast away, but a closer investiga¬ 
tion will show that they require only more sunlight 
to cause them to grow and blossom forth and take 
their rightful places as necessary plants in this gar¬ 
den. Therefore the gardener needs judgment and 
discrimination; he needs, too, to understand the rela¬ 
tive value of every plant and blossom so that condi¬ 
tions may be made duly favourable for the growth of 
all. For each plant and blossom has its place, hc.s 


THE MIND’S CULTIVATION 189 

its need and use. All require cultivation, but some 
require it to a greater degree than do others. 

Temperance is the sunflower that ever turns to the 
light, because a weed will grow up that is called in¬ 
temperance and destroy the vitality of the plant. If 
one cultivates temperance in all things and in all 
ways, she will bring peace, rest, and real satisfac¬ 
tion. She disposes beautifully of her many rewards 
to all who cultivate her. She blesses, strengthens, 
and uplifts all her followers. 

Wisdom is a rare plant that is often mistaken for 
another plant called knowledge. Wisdom has all the 
qualities of knowledge but possesses something more. 
Knowledge has many blossoms; in fact, the many 
blossoms often overwhelm the plant itself, and while 
the blossoms add some colour they emit but little per- 
fume. Men call the blossoms facts. The great ac¬ 
cumulation of these facts never shows as much colour 
or gives as much perfume as one blossom on the 
plant called wisdom. It is said by some that wis¬ 
dom is only a higher degree or development of knowl¬ 
edge, but while there is some similarity between the 
two plants, knowledge had its beginning in the outer 
visible world, while the seed for wisdom came from 
the inner invisible. The great difference between the 
two in expression is that the blossoms of knowledge 
are called facts, but wisdom contains both blossom 


igo WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

and fruit which men call acts . The two plants grow 
best in close proximity and the person who cultivates 
both will be most richly repaid. 

There are many other plants that require consider¬ 
able attention when they are beginning to grow, and 
if the gardener is wise he will aid them in every way; 
and in the course of time he will find that they have 
established 1 a habit of growing when they seem to 
grow just of themselves, without even the gardener’s 
having to give them attention. From the attention 
they first received it has become the natural thing 
for them to grow. No one should leave them out of 
their garden, for no garden would be complete with¬ 
out them. Only those who grow them can appreci¬ 
ate them at their real worth. 

There is one little group of plants all belonging 
to the same family. One is called resourcefulness , 
another persistence . Both more than repay one for 
their cultivation. Again there is another family 
called truthfulness, firmness, generosity, loyalty; no 
garden would be complete without these. One might 
dwell at length on their beauty but this is not neces¬ 
sary for those who cultivate them, and those who do 
not, can have no adequate knowledge of how beauti¬ 
ful they are until they begin to cultivate them in a 
very thorough way. 

There is another family belonging to the pansy 


THE MIND’S CULTIVATION 191 

group, I believe, wonderful in colour and perfume, 
but withal of a retiring modesty, so that they are 
not always appreciated at their real worth. They 
are known as peace, gentleness , Kindness, good-will , 
sympathy; they add very much to the quality of 
one’s garden. Meekness and humility also belong to 
the same family. 

Far away back in the distant past, the Supreme 
Gardener planted one seed in life’s garden; the blos¬ 
som of the seed is called Love. In time came the 
different varieties of this one seed and people called 
them faith, hope and joy . But from the one seed 
of Love have come all the other plants and blossoms; 
all different degrees, different manifestations of the 
first mother plant. Ages have passed since the seed 
of Love was planted, yet few have learned of its 
real wonder or its real glory. Only the gardener 
who has tenderly cared for it; who has sought in 
every way to bring about its development, can ap¬ 
preciate its wonder or its beauty. Love is one glori¬ 
ous mass of white blossoms exhaling a perfume 
transcending that of any or all other plants. The 
blossom of faith is a gorgeous yellow, and hope is a 
royal blue. The garden that is in possession of 
these three most wonderful of all plants will have 
every other variety of plants growing in luxurious 
abundance, because where these three grow, their in- 


192 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

fluence is so all-embracing that every plant responds 
to their quickening impulse. All draw their colour 
and perfume from the great white blossom. The 
yellow, and the blue, and every prismatic colour 
wherewith each plant and blossom clothes itself is a 
radiation or a differentiation from the first primal 
seed that was to produce the living blossom of life 
known as Love. Love is called the pearl of great 
price for which the seeker is willing to give up every¬ 
thing else in order to enter into its possession; but 
strange as it may seem, when one has surrendered 
every possession in order to obtain it, he finds that 
all his possessions, instead of being lost, are actually 
redoubled. Love can blossom only through inner de¬ 
sire. When the mind of the gardener is centered 
on the all-inclusive oneness of Love to the exclusion 
of all else, then will the plant blossom and grow, and 
with its growth will come the growth of all the rest. 
He will then come to know and understand that the 
different varieties of plants he has been cultivating 
are all children of this one. He has looked upon 
them, perhaps, as groups of families or distinct va¬ 
rieties, but now he understands their correlation; 
that there is a unity of life in all; that they all pro¬ 
ceed from the one Source; that there is only one Life 
but a diversity of expression, that is in all, through 
all, and yet above all. 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TALENTS 

\ T present, in nearly everything we do, mental 
^ strain and physical tension enter, and because 
of this, an enormous loss of energy occurs. The 
average person in all probability does not put to a 
rightful use even ten per cent of the energy he ex¬ 
pends. He may even now be conscious of the fact 
that concentration will cause him to do everything 
in an easier, better, and quicker way; and yet he 
blunders on in the old way so that when his day’s 
labours are finished, he is mentally exhausted and 
physically tired, although he has really accomplished 
but little. 

Man could, if he would, learn wonderful lessons 
from the animal forms which he considers so far be¬ 
low him in intelligence. The ant and the bee both 
know better, and do better, and accomplish more in 
their limited field of action because their efforts are 
put forth to a definite end and purpose, and their 
forces are used to the completion of such end and 
purpose. Tireless in their efforts, they succeed in 
accomplishing with their tiny bodies far in excess 
193 


194 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT*? 

of what the most highly developed man is able to 
perform. 66 Go to the ant, thou sluggard,” said 
the Wise Man. Yes, we might go to the many in¬ 
sects or animals and learn lessons that would prove 
of profit, if put to a definite use. 

We may say that the insect or animal knows in¬ 
stinctively the right thing to do; but if we all fol¬ 
lowed the instinct or the intuitive knowledge that we 
may all be open to, if we will, we should be just as 
industrious, just as thorough and just as successful 
in our sphere of action as the animals or the insects 
in theirs. What we need is to use all our forces; to 
learn, for one thing, to keep the mind focused on 
;what we are doing; to persevere regardless of diffi¬ 
culties ; to know that what we desire in mind or heart 
can take form in a tangible way in the outer world, 
can become a living expression of what we have 
thought and felt; that our grandest vision can take 
concrete form when we work with heart, and mind, 
and body for the full and perfect accomplishment of 
that end; but soul, mind and body must all work to¬ 
gether in unison. In the accomplishment of any 
great end or purpose, it is not through the use of 
any one talent that we are going to make our great¬ 
est success but rather through the use of every talent 
that we are consciously in possession of. It is in 
this way and only in this way that we become real 


DEVELOPMENT OF TALENTS 195 

creators, or real workers with God to do His will, to 
bring His kingdom into actualized being on earth. 

In considering the use of mental forces we must 
understand that normal concentration precedes 
meditation. A word of explanation as to what I 
mean by the term normal concentration! Concen¬ 
tration has to do with man’s objective life. When¬ 
ever he is using his mind to do the natural things 
that are required of him, in his every-day work, if 
he is keeping his mind thoroughly centered upon 
them, he is acquiring normal concentration. 

True concentration of mind must always have some 
real, some definite object in view that is going to 
produce some real, some definite work. But people 
often try to acquire talents in other than a normal 
way, and some teachers tell their students to gaze 
steadfastly at a black spot on a wall or, while sit¬ 
ting, to fix their attention on their toes, to give up 
their whole mind to gazing in a mirror, to concen¬ 
trate their sight on the light of a burning candle. 
All such advice is worse than useless. No true de¬ 
velopment of any kind can come from it. Concentra¬ 
tion or meditation attained in this way is only a 
case of self-hypnotization. Abnormal methods can 
never give normal or natural results. 

Each and every talent we truly develop comes 
through the exercise of faculties of mind put to some 


196 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

real, some tangible purpose. People should not be 
deceived by the wonder-makers who profit through 
the credulity of their foolish, misguided followers. 

Remember that all development comes through the 
exercise or the use of our spiritual, our mental, our 
physical gifts. Into everything a man does, let him 
put his whole heart and his best work, and he will de¬ 
velop the faculty of concentration in a normal way. 
Concentration is one end of a law of life and medi¬ 
tation the other. Through the use of concentration 
we use the smallest amount of energy and get the 
largest results; through the use of meditation we 
acquire that energy. Meditation is really the act 
of “ feeling after God ” in the inner Life. This 
“ feeling after God ” energizes one’s whole life; and 
the energy thus acquired is in turn to be used 
through concentration in making one’s outer life 
correspond as nearly as possible to the inner life, so 
that the inner is always taking form in the outer. 

Outer desire is always the first step toward the ac¬ 
cumulation of material riches. Outer desire gets 
its best results through relating itself to concentra¬ 
tion. Inner desire is always the first step in man’s 
quest after spiritual riches, and he best attains that 
end through prayer and meditation. 

Concentration means mind at its highest degree 
of activity. Meditation means the highest degree of 


DEVELOPMENT OF TALENTS 197 

spiritual activity. One has solely to do with the in¬ 
ner ; the other has solely to do with the outer. One 
relates itself to spiritual causes; the other is con¬ 
stantly producing physical effects. 

When one is thoroughly balanced between inner 
and outer, we speak of such a person as being poised. 
Keeping such poise is generally supposed to be a 
difficult thing, but just the reverse of this is true. 

As an illustration, let any one poise the body by 
drawing the abdomen slightly in and holding the 
trunk of the body erect with the use of the intercostal 
muscles, then note the perfect ease and freedom of 
the body. Every part of the body is being used, but 
each organ being in its right place, there is a free¬ 
dom experienced for the whole body which could not 
be experienced by taking any other position of the 
body. 

What holds true of physical poise holds just as 
true of spiritual and mental poise, of which the 
physical is at best only an expression. There is a 
lawful and orderly way of self-expression and the 
person who follows this way will always be able to 
accomplish the greatest results. The natural way 
is always the easy way. The abnormal is always 
the strained and tense way which gives the smallest 
amount of results for the greatest expenditure of 
energy; it is easier to do right than wrong. 


198 what is new thoughts 

To the people who are straining after worldly 
riches, let me say that inner riches bring with them 
all that is necessary for the outer life. Then all 
mental and physical strain and tension, when one is 
living a normal life, shall pass away. 

Through the right use of mind and body, true tal¬ 
ents are evolved. Every talent we are in possession 
of is something that we have worked out. The tal¬ 
ent first of all is latent in one’s soul; then, through 
use of mind and body, it becomes a potential factor 
for good in man’s outer life. The only life wherein 
man grows and develops his latent forces and pos¬ 
sibilities is when he is using mind and body to the 
fullest extent without undue tension, or mental 
worry, or anxiety. 

Whatever plane of action a man may be on, he 
will find, through doing his work in a faithful and 
hopeful way mentally, and in a strong yet not a 
strained way physically, that he will be furthering 
his every interest not only materially, but bringing 
about still greater development of his spiritual and 
mental and physical life. 

When any one, in the doing of his work, no mat¬ 
ter what it may be, is trying to do it in the best pos¬ 
sible way it can be done, he is fitting himself for a 
still greater work. The reason why people remain 
in certain walks of life and never reach any higher is 
largely because they do their work in an indifferent 


DEVELOPMENT OF TALENTS 199 

way. There never was a more pernicious doctrine 
that stood in the way of man’s mental and physical 
progress than this one. Anything that is worth 
doing is worth doing well. Anything that we do 
well, we should try to do better. Only in this way 
can ^ real success be attained in life; only in this 
way can we unfold to our highest powers and possi¬ 
bilities, and attain the real measure of a man. 

How can any one expect to perform great things 
in life if he is neglectful or does the little things he 
has to do in a slovenly way? 

A man should once for all understand that if he 
wishes to live life at its full, he must be constantly 
working and as constantly improving on his work; 
that the work of yesterday, no matter how good it 
was, should have been improved upon in that of to¬ 
day. Progress is eternal. There is no finality; 
there is no ultimate but an ever-ascending scale 
wherein life is ever becoming renewed. 

Even if yesterday was filled with new visions and 
realizations, yet the needs of to-day require a still 
greater vision, a still greater expression in one’s 
work. It is in this way that the mountain heights 
in life are climbed. With each new height there is 
an ever-expanding horizon, an ever-increasing won¬ 
der and glory, an ever-widening world of beauty. 

Life becomes great and wonderful only as we keep 
our eyes steadfastly fixed on that which is before. 


200 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

Leave the things of the past behind; they might have 
been all good in their time and place, but their time 
and place have gone by forever. The life can only 
be kept new by new ideals, and by pressing forward 
for the fulfillment of the ideal. The ideal of yes¬ 
terday should never be the ideal of to-day. 

Into our own hands has been committed the work¬ 
ing out of our own lives. Only as a man is faithful 
in his work can he hope to realize the fullness of life, 
can he hope to enter into a realization of the true 
joy of a life that is never ending. Everything in 
life that is worth having is worth working for, 
and for everything we receive we must pay the 
price. 

Of late years a most pernicious doctrine has been 
instilled in the minds of many. It is this:—that 
they can get something for nothing. It is far more 
detrimental to true development than an older one 
held to by certain bodies of orthodox religions, ex¬ 
pressed in the words of a hymn: “ I am glad sal¬ 

vation is free. Salvation’s free for you and me; I 
am glad salvation is free.” Such doctrines encour¬ 
age both mental and physical laziness. God has en¬ 
dowed us with many gifts of soul, mind, and body; 
but with them all we must work out our own salva¬ 
tion. It is not worked out for us by God or man. 
Our lives are what we make them. 


DEVELOPMENT OF TALENTS 201 


Once, while in Florida, I was shown a little spot 
on the trunk of a fig-tree and was told by the owner 
that it was a parasite that lived on the tree. He 
gave me a magnifying glass and told me to examine 
it, and in doing so I found another parasite living 
on the one that was living on the tree. 

The human parasites who expect to get something 
in this world for nothing will attract to them other 
parasites who will live on them. Only as peo¬ 
ple render an equivalent for what they receive are 
they really adjusted in a true way to life. Every 
dollar of the world’s wealth is acquired through phys¬ 
ical labour. Some one has to produce it by the 
sweat of his brow. When we take any part of this 
wealth from the world’s store, we can rightfully do 
so only by giving some equivalent. That equivalent 
may be of a spiritual, mental, or physical nature, yet 
because we do give the equivalent we are entitled to 
what we receive and to all we receive. 

Let none entertain the false idea that they can 
enrich their lives at the expense of others, without 
giving in return. There can never be anything last¬ 
ing in such possessions. Sometimes people expend 
time and effort in trying to acquire wealth through 
dishonest ways and means, but if the same time, en¬ 
ergy and mental effort had been given to some le¬ 
gitimate work, they would have acquired far greater 


202 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


riches. The old maxim that honesty is the best pol¬ 
icy is just as true to-day as it ever was. 

Giving and receiving are the two ends of one law; 
and in proportion as we may give of whatever we 
possess—giving so that it will accomplish some defi¬ 
nite good—we shall receive. The laws of God are 
absolutely just. They measure back to us what we 
have meted to others; not simply on any one plane 
of life, but on every plane of life. Let no one de¬ 
ceive himself; there is an absolute law of cause and 
effect; and whatever we give, be it good or bad, to 
any other personality or the world at large, we 
shall receive in turn as we have given. 

It makes no difference how talented a person may 
become, if he ceases in his efforts towards still 
greater becoming his life becomes stagnant. It is 
only through work that we accomplish. Unceasing 
effort ever brings with it its own reward. 

The truly great life is one that consists at first of 
living ideals, ideals that are ever growing, and a 
ceaseless effort to make such ideals practical is nec¬ 
essary in the every-day life of man. One should 
never be afraid of giving of oneself to the full. The 
man or woman who says 66 1 receive only so much 
wages and I am not going to give of my work to any 
greater degree than I receive ” will find that such a 
course is a mistaken one. Those who give fully and 
freely of themselves are the people who receive fully 


DEVELOPMENT OF TALENTS 203 

and freely from others. Give and ye shall receive. 

Into all our work we should enter with the spirit 
of joy; we should be thoroughly interested in all that 
we are doing; then there would be no lagging and 
no thinking about the time. It is well to remember 
that one’s work is an expression of oneself. If it is 
well done, it shows intelligence in rightly directed 
thought and effort. 

It is an old saying and a true one that there is 
always room at the top; but we are not to be 
“ boosted ” there by any one else; the only way to 
get to the top is to attain to it through one’s own 
effort. Whatever one does, if one does it well, he 
will find that there are always others who are look¬ 
ing for such a person. Let any one learn to make 
himself invaluable and he is not going to be out of 
work. He is always going to find a fair return for 
his services. 

Talents are given to us to use and through their 
constant use we attain to still greater power, while 
new possibilities are ever unfolding to our mental 
vision. Take the Great Master’s advice:—“ What¬ 
soever your hand findeth to do, do it with your 
might ” and grow great in the doing. This is the 
true way; this is the only way that leads to a thor¬ 
oughly successful, happy life, and such lives will 
ultimately be the normal lives of all men and 


women. 


204 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

Some may ask, “When shall this new time come? 
Are we going to see it take place while in our physi¬ 
cal bodies here on this earth? ” The time will come 
when man is willing and ready to work with heart 
and mind for the full and complete realization of his 
highest ideals. Through individual ideals and ef¬ 
fort shall the desire be awakened in the minds of 
the many for a better and truer knowledge of life 
and its laws. Yes, the time cometh and now is, 
cometh for those who are yet unawakened, but who 
shall yet awaken; others have already entered into 
the mysteries of the kingdom of God—the kingdom 
of God which existed before the beginning of time 
or things—have already tasted of its joys, and 
realized something of its successes; and have al¬ 
ready consciously entered the pathway of eternal 
life. To such the beginning of the new world has 
already come; to such the old things have passed 
away, for they have entered into the newness of the 
real springtime of the life eternal. “ The kingdom 
of God cometh not by observation! ” Man cannot 
say “lo here, or lo there.” The kingdom of God is 
a state of consciousness. This kingdom of God 
knows neither time nor space; it is without beginning 
or ending, but it is ever awakening conscious recog¬ 
nition on the part of those who with heart and mind 
desire to enter its domain. 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE AGE TO COME 

OOME have thought that in a far distant past 
^ there was an age known to man as the golden 
age; an age wherein everything was different from 
what exists to-day, when men were God-like men, 
when absolute justice and equity prevailed, when 
no one was held in bondage to any one else—a land 
wherein every one was free to live his own life ac¬ 
cording to the highest dictates of mind and spirit. 
It was at a time before sin or death had entered 
the world, or else mankind had passed through all 
the varying struggles, such as life at the present 
is going through, and through desire and struggle, 
had attained to a full mastery of his own life. I 
like to dwell on that part of it, because, what any one 
has accomplished, what any single person or body 
of people have accomplished, can with the same de¬ 
sire, knowledge, and effort again be achieved. 
There are some who believe that the golden age lies 
before, and that whether one ever existed in the 
past or not, is of little concern, that there is one 
awaiting man in the time to come, that man’s deserts 
205 


206 what is new thought? 

shall yet blossom as the rose; the time in which no 
one shall say “know ye the Lord? For all shall 
know Him, even from the least unto the greatest ”; 
that the whole trend of evolution is toward this 
golden age; that this will be an age of justice and 
equity, that this will be an age of peace and good¬ 
will, that this will be an age when man’s powers 
shall have blossomed forth so that whether his work 
be mental or physical, it will be a perfect work, a 
true expression of himself. How or why this age 
is to come, and why everything is going to be so 
much better, we are not told by the prophets much; 
nevertheless, the prophets seemed very sure of 
its coming. We know that the dreams of one age 
have been realized in another; that the most won¬ 
derful desires and aspirations that man can be pos¬ 
sessed of are all possible of fulfillment. Therefore 
the golden age is no empty vision; it expresses the 
longing desire on the part of humanity for con¬ 
ditions which are not yet attained, and which in the 
present seem almost unattainable, so many barriers, 
so many difficulties stand in the way of their realiza¬ 
tion. Life is so complex, so filled with the prob¬ 
lems of to-day, that the problems seem to be no 
sooner solved than the individual or the world finds 
itself confronted with new and greater problems; 
and so the golden age may seem to some a long way 


THE AGE TO COME 


207 

off in the future, as it seems to others a long way 
off in the past. The whole great world never takes 
hold of any great subject altogether. There is no 
thorough unity of purpose or action, because at 
the present there are countless degrees of develop¬ 
ment, of evolution in human life; and the develop¬ 
ment on the lower plane cannot understand that on 
the higher, and very often when those who are highly 
developed would work for the good of those less 
developed than themselves, they find their greatest 
opposition coming from those they would help. At 
the present there can be, therefore, no united action 
on the part of humanity as a whole. Both in the 
past and present, the strong have exploited the 
weak, the rich have profited by the poor; coercion 
to further the ends of individuals or corporate bodies, 
or coercion of the government over its subjects, the 
dictation of the few towards the many has been, 
and is, common in every land, and so naturally, 
those who have been exploited for the interest of 
others, view with suspicion any effort put forward 
by the individual, or by bodies of men to alleviate or 
improve their conditions; believing from experience 
that some ulterior motive must be back of any such 
proceeding, and so the very people who could and 
would do the best toward bringing about the better 
state of society, find themselves confronted by hav- 


208 what is new thought? 

ing all kinds of obstacles placed in their way by 
those whom they desire to help most. The task 
at best is an unthankful one, but this is no reason 
why any one should become discouraged and feel 
himself absolved from his work; pioneers in any de¬ 
partment of life are those who have the most trying 
and the most difficult work to perform, but back 
of that work there is the compensation of incentive, 
and the interest that can never be felt to the same 
degree by those who later follow in their footsteps. 
The golden age is yet to come. It has been fore¬ 
told by the prophets, but the golden age is not yet 
realized, and before it can be, man must work for 
its coming. No matter how great an ideal may be, 
when some people grasp the truth of it, from that 
moment on, the people who discern its meanings, 
who have grasped its truth, must set themselves 
steadfastly toward bringing about the desired end 
of the ideal, because ideals live in the minds of men 
in order to be expressed, no matter what barriers 
may have to be destroyed or overcome before the 
fulfillment of the ideal is attained. To some people 
who believe that the golden age lies before, and to 
the people who have some conception in mind of what 
this golden age is to represent, to them has already 
come the pioneer work that is necessary before such 
an age can come. Man is making his own world; 


THE AGE TO COME 209 

it is to be a world in which there shall be neither 
rich nor poor, sin nor disease, death nor the grave, 
a world in which man shall have made all things 
subject unto himself. All who are conscious of this 
unrealized truth must begin to work for its coming. 
The golden age will come first of all into the minds 
and into the hearts of the few people, and these few 
shall impart of what they have received to the many, 
and what they impart will be, as it were, the seed 
that shall later bear fruit in all lives that have re¬ 
ceived it, and from this seed there will come a new 
kingdom of man on earth. The coming of that king¬ 
dom is not to be realized in a day or a night, on the 
part of the world; there are countless things yet to 
be met and overcome. Whenever any one individual 
is meeting those things and overcoming them in his 
own life, he is an instrument preparing the way for 
the coming of the new kingdom. He is not alone 
working for his own good, but he is working for 
the good of the many; he is not alone working for 
the good of the present, but for the good of the 
time to come. None can tell how great is the in¬ 
fluence they exert. All that each one can do helps 
to hasten the coming of that better day, and that 
better age. Whatever any person or any body of 
people may wish to see done in the world, let them 
know that the way of its coming to pass is through 


210 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


the effort on their part to live what they would 
have others to live, to work while it is day. 

The day of competition is nearing its end. There 
is no question but that it serves a purpose in the 
evolution of life. It helped to call out latent energy 
in mind and body; it began with individuals, but 
extended to nations; its prime object was first of 
all individual gain, then corporate gain, and lastly 
national gain; and usually the effort was to gain at 
some one else’s expense, at other’s loss. Corporate 
unity has shown that the few people banded to¬ 
gether with a mutual object in view, can usually 
accomplish their ends and purposes at a smaller ex¬ 
penditure of money, and with a greater amount of 
results; so that in recent years partial co-operation 
has been steadily growing, and undoubtedly will 
grow until man fully realizes that full co-operation 
must become a law of life. Nature shows us that 
it is through the co-operation of all the varying 
elements that life on the planet is maintained; and 
it will be through co-operation, not confined to corpo¬ 
rate interests, but world-wide interests, that all peo¬ 
ple and all classes and races through working to¬ 
gether for the common good, enter into the real 
joy of living. The time is coming when high tariffs 
or low tariffs placed on goods by one country or by 
another will be unknown. The real protection will 


THE AGE TO COME 


211 


be the effort on the part of the rich and the strong 
to help the poor and the weak; not to deprive them 
of their own initiative, or in any way to take away 
from their freedom of action, but to co-operate with 
them, to help them in the development of their own 
resources; in other words, to help them to help them¬ 
selves. When a few of the nations of the earth come 
to see the value of reciprocity as between nation and 
nation, the rest will be quick to follow. Reciprocity, 
which may have to deal first with material things, 
will later become a reciprocity of ideals, and the 
more enlightened nations of the earth will be in a 
far better position to have their ideals received from 
the more unenlightened, because of just and equit¬ 
able laws in their mercantile relations with other 
people. Greed and selfish desire on the part of 
any individual or nation inspires suspicion and an¬ 
tagonism in the minds of those against whom such 
greed is directed, so that the very good things that 
the individual or the nation might desire to do are 
often viewed with suspicion and hostility. Integrity, 
honesty, square dealing, in spite of all that may 
be said to the contrary, are still elements to be con¬ 
sidered as necessary to real success in life, whether 
practiced by individuals or nations. 

I have said elsewhere that everything begins first 
through individual effort, that it is through the 


212 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

ideals and efforts of one individual that another’s 
ideals and efforts are awakened; and so the real 
reciprocity of life must have its inception, first of 
all in the minds of the few. 

The idealist dreams of a new and a better world; 
he communicates his dream to receptive minds, or 
to those who are already prepared for a new vision 
of life; he sees things in his mind not as they are, 
but as they should be; then a warfare begins; a war 
that is ever being waged as between the old order 
and the new. But the new must ever win out, be¬ 
cause there is with it an ever-increasing, an ever- 
enlarging life. The ideal expands, it grows larger 
and more complete, while with the old, its life is an 
ever-receding one; it may for a time fight for ex¬ 
istence, but the old must ever make way for the 
new; the old may have a force of habit back of it, 
and for a season it may seem as though habit were 
supreme, but the new has the force and conviction; 
it also has the accumulative value that accrues from 
other minds being continually won over to it; it may 
still be only a partial truth, but it contains a larger 
vision of life than did the old. The dreamer may 
dream dreams, but the dream until actualized, is 
not going to benefit mankind; therefore it is nec¬ 
essary for the dreamer to become his dream, to live 
it in so far as he is able to perceive it. The dream 


THE AGE TO COME 213 

of a true reciprocity has come to the world, but as 
yet it is more of a dream than an actualized reality. 
In a true reciprocity one should be as much inter¬ 
ested in what he has to give as in what he has to 
receive; in fact, giving should always precede receiv¬ 
ing. This is a part of the great law of life, the 
law of cause and effect, that cause is first and effect 
comes later; that one must learn to give freely of 
heart and mind before the external giving can bring 
about a real interchange; there must be this reci¬ 
procity of heart and mind, because this is the true 
order that everything should begin in man’s inner 
life first, and later on be made manifest by the 
outer expression. When one learns to put thought 
and feeling into all his actions, he has discovered 
a part of the great secret of real living. Our 
thoughts and feelings constitute the seed which we 
are daily sowing, and from which the reaping comes 
later. Whatever the quality of the seed may be, 
the harvest will be like unto it. There can be a 
reciprocity which shall bring to the individual or to 
the nation all that heart and mind can desire; or 
again, the reverse of this may be true, the wrong 
kind of seed is sown. No one can expect to sow 
one kind of seed and gather another kind of fruit. 
Each seed begets fruit after its kind, and each seed 
must be planted before it can bring forth fruit, and 


214 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

in all true reciprocity there is the seed planting 
time as there is in nature. We must all come to 
see that our own good is bound up in the good of 
the many, and he who serves the common good is of 
a truth doing the will of the Father. We come in 
closest touch with the great heart of Divinity when 
we are doing most for humanity. When we are serv¬ 
ing our fellow-man, we are living a far more vital 
life than we could possibly do if we were working 
solely for our own selfish ends and purposes. It may 
be said by some that in taking this course one stands 
in one’s own light, and that one’s own development 
is being retarded, but the truth is that whenever 
any one is engaged in doing good for others, he is 
actually storing up riches for himself. He may 
not be conscious of this, perhaps it is as well that he 
should not be, for then his motives are disinterested 
ones; nevertheless, that of which he gives, he re¬ 
ceives back again in kind. Even the very thoughts 
and desires we have for the welfare of others bring 
to us something that we could not receive without 
such thoughts and desires. No one can really profit 
at some one else’s expense. One may have all his 
selfish desires gratified by another, without having 
any real satisfaction from them because they have 
not been fulfilled in the true way. The laws of life 
never intended that any one should get something 


THE AGE TO COME 215 

for nothing, and be made happy in such receiving. 
There must be a true reciprocity of giving and re¬ 
ceiving. All real satisfaction comes when we are 
conforming to the requirements of life and its laws. 
We should be willing to allow others to help us to¬ 
ward the helping of ourselves, or to help in turn to¬ 
ward the helping of others in the same way. It is 
not that we should carry other people’s burdens, 
for every man must bear his own burden, but rather 
that through mutual co-operation we may make it 
easier for others as well as ourselves to carry life’s 
burdens. Every man works out his own salvation, 
but we may help in the lightening of one’s burdens; 
we may make it easier for others in working out 
their salvation. Giving and helping each person 
according to his various needs or necessities, but 
ultimately the responsibility of one’s own actions 
must be assumed. No one can live another’s life. 
In the last analysis no one can know better than 
oneself what is necessary to life. No matter what 
we may think, the ultimate authority for every 
course of action is resident in the life of the indi¬ 
vidual. It is either altogether true that God work- 
eth within us to will and to do, or it is not true; and 
if it is God or Universal Will that is constantly 
acting upon man’s personal life, then by what right 
do we interfere with the action of this Will in an- 


216 what is new thought? 


other? Do we know better, can we see clearer than 
the indwelling Father? No, the indwelling Father 
may not be recognized consciously by the individual 
as working within him to will and to do; neverthe¬ 
less, whether conscious or unconscious, each soul is 
under the care and direction of an all-loving Father, 
who is just as mindful of the good and the real inter¬ 
ests of one soul as of another. The enlightened 
soul is not living some other soul’s life, but only 
holding up light to enlighten the way. 

Living ideals, or ideals that are being lived, are 
one of the great means that a man may use to help 
his fellow-man, not by compelling him to accept 
his ideals or compelling him to live his ideals, but 
rather through having ideals and living them him¬ 
self does he become a real helper to his fellow-man. 
In the absolute truth there is absolute freedom; 
knowing the truth and living the truth is what makes 
one free, and one in his own freedom never seeks to 
bring any one else into bondage. For what is free¬ 
dom to one might be bondage to another. 

In the process of development all men pass through 
the different planes of life. Sometimes in our 
anxiety for the welfare of others, we desire to have 
them on the same plane that we are, without regard 
to the intermediate planes that they must pass 
through, and that we ourselves have passed through 


THE AGE TO COME 217 

before we reached the plane we are expressing on. 
The elemental man must live his life according to 
divine plan; the intellectual man must be guided by 
his own intellectual knowledge of life; the spiritual 
man must use his own inner spirituality in order to 
give full and free expression to his life. We are 
parts one of another, but every part must fulfill its 
own functions, and no part should ever seek to usurp 
the function of some other part or try to control 
any other life than its own, save through legitimate 
effort where one is helping another who desires help; 
helping him to help himself. There should be this 
real reciprocity, this real help, which nourishes and 
strengthens both the giver and recipient, because, 
what we give to another, strange as it may seem, we 
retain for ourselves. 

When a piece of iron or steel is rubbed on a 
magnet, the iron or steel receives the same qualities 
of which the magnet is possessed, and so it has the 
same action as that possessed by the magnet; and 
yet the magnet is not the loser; it has the same 
power to magnetize that it had before. 

So in the giving of oneself to others there is 
nothing lost to the individual, while much may be 
gained by the others. It is not necessary in life 
that any one should lose in order that some one else 
should gain; the supply is an unending one, the 


218 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


riches of life are eternal riches; we can give out of 
our abundance and still have an abundance. We 
are not allowed to squander or to waste without los¬ 
ing, but he who uses his riches and does not abuse 
them, will constantly grow in increasing riches, be¬ 
cause in all giving there must be receiving; it is not 
one law for giving and another law of receiving, but 
giving and receiving are the two ends of the same 
law. “ Give and ye shall receive.” Only do not 
scatter your seed by the way-side. Wherever the 
soil is prepared for the reception of the seed, there 
sow your seed and a bountiful harvest will be th£ 
result. Use your best thought in sowing the seed, 
but have no worry or anxiety concerning its growth. 
When the seed is sown in the life of another we have 
nothing further to do with its growth. The other 
person who receives may use it, or refuse to use it, 
but the responsibility for its growth lies with him. 
Recognize that results are with God, with the God 
who lives in that other personality; and that each 
man, while he may receive the seed, may receive liv¬ 
ing ideals from others; it must become his own seed, 
his own ideal before it can bring forth fruit in his 
own life. The living seed, living ideals, are not the 
exclusive property of one individual, to have and to 
hold for himself, but are the property of all who will 
lay hold and make them his own; and so no loss 


THE AGE TO COME 219 

accrues to any other individual when this seed or 
these ideals are received by another from him. Each 
person must live his own life according to his own 
way, but in the living of that life, he may receive 
both aid and comfort from others; but live that life, 
and live it all in all he must; because each man 
shall work out for himself a complete, a whole sal¬ 
vation and enter into the joy of his own work. Each 
person must be blessed because of what he himself 
has been and done, and not because of what any one 
else has been and done. The reward is unto every 
man according to his work. If he has given much, 
he shall receive much; if he has given little, he shall 
receive little; if he has overcome many things, he 
shall be great in many things; if he has overcome in 
few things then he shall be ruler over few things; 
if he has suffered, he shall rejoice; if he has helped 
others in their suffering, then greater joys shall come 
into his own life. Whatever he has given to the 
world, the world shall give back to him again; what¬ 
soever he has sown that also shall he reap. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 

i 6 T TE hath made of one blood all people who 
^ ^ do dwell on the face of the earth.” This 
statement must mean that the elemental savage and 
the highly unfolded, civilized man both have their 
source in the one Life, both are children of the one 
God. The only difference between what we term the 
highest and what we term the lowest is the varying 
degrees of development; and the way that one has 
taken, all have taken or must take. There are the 
same inherent possibilities in the savage that have 
been attained by the saint. We are all members one 
of another. If there has been a Divine Father- 
Motherhood, then that implies an All-Inclusive 
Brotherhood. 

The most elemental races give evidence of being 
in possession, in an elementary way, of the same 
powers of mind that the most highly civilized nations 
of the earth are possessed of. Some may argue 
that, because one race of people have attained a high 
order of civilization in a comparatively short period 
of time, while another great body of people have 
220 


THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 221 

not attained it notwithstanding the fact that thou¬ 
sands of years have elapsed since they first peopled 
the earth, therefore such people cannot be classed 
as being a part of the great Brotherhood of human¬ 
ity. Such reasoning, at best, is only superficial. In 
different parts of the world, environment has much 
to do with calling out one’s latent power. We know, 
too, that the effort to adjust brings with it increas¬ 
ing knowledge; that in other parts of the world there 
is not the same necessity for adjustment to environ¬ 
ment; that therefore progress is much slower, and 
that the mere lapse of years does not count for 
nearly as much in the progress of a race as other 
considerations. We know also that extremes are not 
favourable to development; that the extreme pressure 
of environment in the far north, where the great 
thought is how to get the necessary food in order 
to preserve human existence, or the other extreme in 
the torrid zone where everything grows in abundance 
and little if any effort is required to maintain phys¬ 
ical existence, precludes growth; that the most rapid 
growth and development take place between these 
two extremes. Therefore it would not be fair to any 
people to measure their growth by time, for it is a 
well-known fact which often occurs that, when people 
are removed from one environment and placed in an¬ 
other, the change is conducive to growth. 


222 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


All the peoples of the earth are linked together 
by one animating Life, one guiding and directing 
Intelligence. There is, however, a greater responsi¬ 
bility resting upon the highly civilized nations of the 
earth than rests on the uncivilized, for they have 
not only their own welfare to consider but the welfare 
of the less civilized. They must see to it that they 
deal righteously with the least developed peoples of 
life’s great Brotherhood. To some degree they must 
become the cause or means by which the weak may 
become strong, by which the ignorant may become 
wise. They must symbolize light rather than dark¬ 
ness, they must be righteous as well as powerful. 

When William Penn went to America, he made it 
part of his religion to deal with the savages as he 
would have them deal with him. Honesty and in¬ 
tegrity entered into all his transactions with the re¬ 
sult that the Quaker people never had any warfare 
with the Indians. But the Puritans and Pilgrims 
apparently left religion out of the question when they 
came to deal with the Indians with the result that for 
many years they were in constant warfare with them. 
Nevertheless they might have attained all their de¬ 
sired ends and objects without bloodshed by dealing 
justly with the people they considered inferior to 
themselves. Thus, wherever civilization goes, if its 
aim is to uplift and to benefit, uplift and benefit will 


THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 223 

come to the less developed natives, but wherever civ¬ 
ilization goes merely to exploit or to help the strong 
to steal from the weak, then the natives are going 
to learn first of all how best to use the same qualities 
of mind that are being directed against them. 

Oppression and wrong dealt out to any people 
will, sooner or later, call out the same traits in those 
who are oppressed or wronged. Some of the strong 
nations of the earth seem to think that the weak and 
undeveloped nations are their legitimate prey; that 
in what they call civilized effort, it is the part of 
righteousness to destroy them in order that they may 
civilize. Even in this twentieth century in many 
parts of the earth many of the great nations are en¬ 
gaged in doing this very thing, destroying the lives 
of people, taking their property and depriving them 
of their God-given rights. And all this is being done 
under what is called Christian civilization. The 
gentle Nazarene, whose greatest object in life was to 
bring peace and good-will to all men, is made to 
stand, as it were, sponsor for this so-called Christian 
civilization, which has in it the cruelty of the tiger 
and the rapacity of the hyena. No, the civilization 
of to-day is not Christian, whatever else it may be. 
The weak are still the prey of the strong. Selfish¬ 
ness is still the dominant note of its being and yet, 
among its members, are to be found men and women 


224 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

holding ideals that are in full accord with those held 
to by the Founder of Christianity. The hope of the 
world lies in the general realization and the fulfill¬ 
ment of these ideals by the mass of the people the 
world over. 

The greatest strength of any nation lies in the 
righteousness of its ideals, the integrity of its 
thought; and the nation that is going to lead the 
world in the time to come will be the one wherein 
human Brotherhood is exemplified in the highest and 
best way. Of what use is it to Christianize the peo¬ 
ple of the world unless you can inculcate the real 
Christian doctrines of life? And how is any nation 
to inculcate into the minds of the weak and the igno¬ 
rant something that they are not living themselves, 
something indeed that is a reproach to their way of 
living? Christianity is constantly being assailed, by 
those who listen to one thing and see another thing 
put into practice, as a religion of hypocrisy, cant, 
and deceit. 

There are many people in many parts of the world 
who are not professed Christians but belong to what 
we, in our ignorance, have been pleased to call the 
heathen people of the world, but who are in reality 
living nearer to real Christian ideals than we are. 
What have we to offer them in exchange for what 
they possess? Why should we call on them to give 


THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 225 

up their religion to become a faction of some one of 
the jarring sects of our so-called Christianity? Hu¬ 
man Brotherhood is not fostered by taking away 
what one may be possessed of and giving nothing in 
return. If we preached less to the so-called heathen, 
and practiced more, we might set an example to them 
worthy to be copied by them. 

For more than eighteen hundred years the Chris¬ 
tian world has been calling itself Christian without 
being so in reality; for many hundreds of years we 
have been trying to enforce on other people at the 
point of the sword and the bayonet, Christian doc¬ 
trines which we ourselves have not practiced. 
Among all the Christian nations of the earth, which 
one has fulfilled that command—“ Whatsoever ye 
would that men should do unto you, do ye even so 
unto them 99 ? or what Christian nation has given any 
heed to that law as stated by the Founder of Chris¬ 
tianity :—“ Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he 
also reap 99 ? That which is true as moral law con¬ 
cerning any one man, is true concerning all 
men and all nations. A nation reaps what it 
sows. The nation that sows bloodshed shall 
reap bloodshed; the nation that sows injustice shall 
reap injustice. Whatsoever a nation gives to other 
nations the same shall be given back to it again, 
whether the gift be called good or evil. Cause and 


226 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT* 


effect are one; every cause is the seed of an effect 
like unto it. We sow the wind and reap the whirl¬ 
wind. We pay the price of every wrong act and we 
receive the reward of every right act. We are the 
makers of our own punishments, and of our own re¬ 
wards. A nation’s ideals shall rise up in judgment 
against it. To whom much is given, of him shall 
much be required. If the Christian nations had not 
known of the Way, the Truth and the Life, they 
would not be held accountable, but because they have 
known and have failed, they must pay the price of 
such knowledge. 

The armies that will come into being in the fu¬ 
ture will be armies of construction instead of destruc¬ 
tion. In almost all the great nations of the earth 
there are thousands of people who, more or less of 
their time, are unemployed, and who have absolutely 
no means of support save what they derive from 
their occasional employment. In many countries, if 
a man has no visible means of support, he is arrested 
and sent to jail and society has to bear the burden 
of this expense. There must be a terrible economic 
blunder somewhere when a man, who could work and, 
from the proceeds, keep himself in all the necessaries 
of life, is sent to jail and left in a state of vicious 
idleness at the expense of society, whereas the same 
society might have furnished him with work and left 


THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 227 

him an independent, self-reliant being, not only add¬ 
ing through useful work to the riches of the world, 
but adding to the riches of his own mind. 

In the United States there are many people who 
are opposed to what they call “ government pater¬ 
nalism ” that is, they object to the Government’s 
providing work for a great army of industrial la¬ 
bourers in reclaiming desert land through irriga¬ 
tion, and doing such work as building embankments 
to hold the Mississippi or other rivers within bounds 
so that the enormous losses entailed on the people of 
such localities should not be incurred. Yet the Gov¬ 
ernment must build jails and workhouses and sup¬ 
port most of their inmates in idleness. Surely if a 
government can do this, it could give employment to 
a large army of men in improvements that would 
make either for national or state good. The men 
and women in jails, workhouses, and other similar 
institutions are parasites on the living, working body 
of humanity, and that not of their own will, but be¬ 
cause Government or society have made them such; 
and thus society as a whole has, through an ever- 
increasing burden of taxation, to pay for the sins 
and crimes of its own making. The day will come 
when society will see that it is far better to keep all 
its numbers employed in some legitimate work than 
to support one set of men and women in idleness at 


228 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 


the expense of the nation, while another set of men 
and women are living in a state of extreme luxury 
and idleness at the expense of the workers. One 
state is as radically wrong as the other. People of 
every degree or station in life should be engaged in 
doing work of one kind or another. The drones 
among the wealthy classes exert a more pernicious 
influence upon the life of society than the drones 
among the poverty-stricken classes for this reason 
that, not being in jail and having liberty of move¬ 
ment, they become conspicuous in society and they 
influence the weak and the shallow-minded in the di¬ 
rection of thinking that idleness is really a true ex¬ 
pression of gentility. A day will yet come when, if 
a man who is able to work, fails to work, neither shall 
he eat. For the ideal of the ages to come will be 
that, in communities, states, or nations, each indi¬ 
vidual shall be expected to work for the good of the 
whole and the whole to work for the good of the in¬ 
dividual. There will be no sluggards or laggards, 
and all the people will rejoice in the work of their 
own hands. 

In the meantime we move slowly, step by step, but 
always getting a little nearer the goal of our hopes 
and desires. Justice, mercy, and equity are, to at 
least a few of the people, becoming fraught with a 
new meaning. New and living ideals shall displace 


THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 229 

the false or the partial ideals of the past. Every 
man shall bear his own burden but in the doing of 
this, society shall not lay on him any unnecessary 
burdens, but rather aid him in making his burdens 
lighter, aid him in the only real way by helping him 
to help himself. Then each man shall enjoy the 
fruits of his own labours; he shall not have to give 
the larger part of what he has produced to aid in 
keeping some one else in a state of luxurious idle¬ 
ness, and another part of what he has received to 
keep people confined in jails, prisons or workhouses 
at his expense, and because of having to do this, 
see the fruits of his labours, instead of proving a 
real benefit to himself and to humanity, literally 
wasted and squandered without accomplishing any 
true end or purpose. When society realizes true 
Brotherhood, the whole product resulting from the 
use of brain and muscle will be so distributed that 
the whole grand body of humanity shall be thor¬ 
oughly nourished according to its needs. No 
thought of future poverty will then mar any one’s 
life. To-day, if there were a righteous distribution 
of the annual products of the world no one would 
ever go hungry; there would be more than enough 
to supply the wants of all. But it is the fear of the 
poverty supposed to lie ahead that causes men and 
women to hoard their earnings instead of using them 


230 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT 1 ? 

for their own good and the good of others. They 
are storing them away for the advent of some evil 
day and thereby hastening the coming of that evil 
day, because, whatever we constantly expect will cer¬ 
tainly, at one time or another, come to pass. 

The mad competition which to-day exists the world 
over will also be done away with. The unnatural 
striving on the part of some to get ahead of others, 
to succeed, even if the failure of others is dependent 
on their success, will come to an end. Sooner or 
later we shall all come to understand that no real 
success is in any sense dependent upon some one else’s 
failure, and then co-operation will become the key¬ 
note of a thoroughly united Brotherhood. In a 
small way we are beginning to perceive the benefits 
which flow from united effort, but no one as yet can 
tell the vast amount of good that will come to the 
world when men and women learn to co-operate in a 
thoroughly organized, systematic way. 

Looking back on the past it might seem to many 
that the realization of Brotherhood was a far-off 
event, but let us remember that at the present time 
everything is moving with a rapidity that the world 
has never before known and that many things are 
being accomplished that the world hitherto has 
thought to be impossible. 

Only a few years ago the Brotherhood of man was 


THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 231 

believed in by the occasional dreamer; now among 
both the Christian and non-Christian nations of 
the earth there is an ever-growing body of people 
who are not only engaged in thinking and talking 
about it but who are putting forth more or less ef¬ 
fort in trying to give some expression to it. There 
is still another side. In any great disaster which 
befalls a nation, the sympathies of other nations the 
world over are awakened to a far greater degree 
than has ever been the case in the past. Again, be¬ 
cause of numberless inventions a closer relationship 
in literature, art and commerce has been established 
and this has brought with it a better understanding, 
by the nations of the earth, of the different view¬ 
points, desires, and needs of each people. Misunder¬ 
standings are usually at the bottom of most disputes, 
whether between individuals or between nations. 
There is, moreover, another factor not to be over¬ 
looked which at present seems to be making for war, 
but in the near future is bound to make for peace— 
the fierce competition existing between nations to get 
the largest possible share of the world’s commerce. 
The battle that is being fought out is one for com¬ 
mercial supremacy. Nevertheless, when a nation goes 
to war it has very much to lose in the way of com¬ 
merce and little to gain, so that in nearly every case, 
instead of its commercial interest being advanced. 


232 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

it is being jeopardized. Great commercial bodies 
are beginning to see the truth of this and are anxious 
for peace, so that they can carry on, without fear or 
hindrance, their traffic with other nations. While 
this may not be the highest altruism, nevertheless if 
it aids in bringing peace to the world, then it is one 
step nearer the realization of a Universal Brother¬ 
hood and a kingdom of God on earth. 

But perhaps one of the best indications of all is 
the work that is being done in England and perhaps 
to a lesser degree by some of the other nations of the 
earth, in pensioning their old people, insuring serv¬ 
ants’ lives against accident or death, giving thorough 
attention to having sanitary buildings for the poor, 
and in a universal effort on the part of its law¬ 
makers to make conditions in life easier and better 
for those who, perhaps, have to bear the greater 
physical burdens of life. The reforms which begin 
with the people have a far more reaching effect on 
life in general than many people suppose. A na¬ 
tion that is just and upright in dealing with all 
classes of its citizens is eventually sure to carry that 
justice and uprightness into its dealings with other 
nations. The Anglo-Saxon race has been the great 
warrior-race of the earth, and it may well be that it 
is also to become the great peace-making and peace- 
loving race of the earth. 


THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 233 

But before human Brotherhood can be realized in 
fact by a nation, equal laws, equal justice, and equal 
rights must be granted to all alike; the equality of 
opportunity must be open alike to rich and poor, 
strong and weak. An all-inclusive Brotherhood is 
not a question of sex, but one wherein men and 
women share and share alike; every right and every 
privilege granted to one sex must also be granted to 
the other. In a true Brotherhood of Humanity, the, 
strong will never seek any undue advantage over 
the weak. If freedom is necessary to the growth 
and full development of a man, surely it is just as 
essential to the growth and full development of a 
woman; and the nation that is first able to perceive 
the truth of this, and that acts accordingly, will be 
the nation that is to be in the van of human prog¬ 
ress the nation that will rule the world. 

Jarring creeds and sects have acted from time im¬ 
memorial to prevent anything like human Brother¬ 
hood, but the night of sectarianism is nearly gone. 
God is not the Father or the upholder of any body, 
sect, or creed. He does not give to one nation and 
withhold from another. He is the one God who is in 
all, through all and above all, acting in all to will 
and to do, regardless of race, creed or colour. All 
that is true in Hindu or Buddhist teaching is in¬ 
spired of God. All that is true in the Hebrew or 


234 WHAT IS NEW THOUGHT? 

Mohammedan religion is drawn from the One and 
only Source. All that is true in the Catholic or 
Protestant religion is true solely because of an in¬ 
dwelling Father who gives of His Light and His Love 
to all who may desire it. “ There is neither Jew nor 
Greek, bond nor free, male nor female 99 in the sight 
of God. Humanity is one; all are parts one of an¬ 
other and the good of the part is essential to the har¬ 
mony of the whole. There is not a God exclusively 
for the Christian any more than there is a God ex¬ 
clusively for the Mohammedan. There is no people 
that ever was, or that ever will be, which is favoured 
of God to the exclusion of any other people. 

The individual, or the nation that lives in con¬ 
formity with the highest ideals they may be in pos¬ 
session of, will make the best adjustments to the laws 
of life and derive the greatest amount of good there¬ 
from, but this in no sense means that God has given 
them anything more, because of their goodness, than 
He has withheld from others because of their evil- 
doings. All who will, may drink of the Living 
Waters and be satisfied; the only thing that is needed 
is that the will of the individual or the nation 
should be brought into harmony with the Divine, the 
Universal Will and through such union that the All- 
Embracing Fatherhood should be fully realized. 
Yes, we are all children of the Father-Mother God, 


THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 235 

and although we have lost sight, for a season, of our 
true heritage, our real birthright, we are at last com¬ 
ing to see that there is a real Fatherhood of God 
and an all-inclusive Brotherhood of man. 











































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